HERMITS: Mechanical Shells for Reconfigurable Robots

HERMITS are tiny experimental robots developed by researchers at MIT’s Media Lab that can move between different “shells” to gain new capabilities.

Inspired by hermit crabs, we designed a modular system for table-top wheeled robots to dock to passive attachment modules, defined as “mechanical shells.” Different types of mechanical shells can uniquely extend and convert the motion of robots with embedded mechanisms, so that, as a whole architecture, the system can offer a variety of interactive functionality by self-reconfiguration.

(via fast company)

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