Fractal Robots – Smart Future of Manufacturing Industry

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ISSN : 2319 – 3182, Volume-2, Issue-4, 2013
103
Fractal Robots – Smart Future of Manufacturing Industry
Arifmohammad Attar, Loukik Kulkarni & S. G. Bhatwadekar
Department of Production Engineering, K.I.T’s COE, Kolhapur.
E-mail : arifbattar@gmail.com, loukik.kulkarni2009@gmail.com, sgb2000@gmail.com
Keywords – Fractal, Fractal bus, N-streamer,
L-streamer
I. INTRODUCTION
The birth of every technology is the result of the
quest for automation of some form of human work.
This has led to many inventions that have made life
easier for us. Fractal Robot is a science that promises to
revolutionize technology in a way that has never been
witnessed before.
The principle behind Fractal Robots is very simple.
You take some cubic bricks made of metals and
plastics, motorize them, put some electronics inside
them and control them with a computer and you get
machines that can change shape from one object to
another. Almost immediately, you can now build a
home in a matter of minutes if you had enough bricks
and instruct the bricks to shuffle around and make a
house! It is exactly like kids playing with Lego bricks
and making a toy hose or a toy bridge by snapping
together Lego bricks-except now we are using computer
and all the work is done under total computer control.
No manual intervention is required. Fractal Robots are
the hardware equivalent of computer software.
II. WHAT ARE FRACTALS?
A fractal is anything which has a substantial
measure of exact or statistical self-similarity. Wherever
you look at any part of its body it will be similar to the
whole object.
III. FRACTAL ROBOT MECHANISM
Considerable effort has been taken in making the
robotic cubes as simple as possible after the invention
has been conceived. The design is such that it has
fewest possible moving parts so that they can be mass
produced. Material requirements have been made as
flexible as possible so that they can be built from metals
and plastics which are cheaply available in
industrialized nations but also from ceramics and clays
which are environmentally friendlier and more readily
available in developing nations. The robotic cubes are
assembled from face plates which have been
manufactured and bolted to a cubic frame as illustrated
in figure
Fig. 1 : Cubic Frame
3.1. Movement Mechanism
Fig. 2 : Cross-section of plate

International Journal on Theoretical and Applied Research in Mechanical Engineering (IJTARME)
ISSN : 2319 – 3182, Volume-2, Issue-4, 2013
104
The petals are pushed in and out of the slots with
the aid of a motor. Each petal could be directly driven
by single motor or they could be driven as a pair with
the aid of a flexible strip of metal.
The petals have serrated edges and they engage
into the neighboring robotic cube through the 45 degree
slots. The serrated edges of the petals are engaged by
either a gear wheel or a large screw thread running the
length of the slot which slides the cubes along.
3.2. Implementation of computer control
All active robotic cubes have a limited
microcontroller to perform basic operations such as the
communication and control of internal mechanism. The
commands to control a Fractal Robot are all commands
for movement such as move left, right etc and hence the
computer program to control the robot is greatly
simplified in that whatever software that is developed
for a large scale robot, it also applies to the smaller
scale with no modifications to the command structure.
The largest component of the Fractal Robot system
is the software. Because shape changing robots are
fractals, everything around the robot such as tooling,
operating system, software etc must be fractally
organized in order to take advantage of the fractal
operation. Fractal Robot hardware is designed to
integrate as seamlessly with software data-structures as
possible. So, it is essential that unifying Fractal
architecture is followed to the letter for compatibility
and interoperability. Fractal architecture dominates the
functions of the core of the O.S., the data-structures, the
implementation of the devices etc. Everything that is
available to the O.S. is containerized into fractal data
structures that permit possible compatibility and
conversion issues possible.
3.3. Fractal O.S.
The Fractal O.S. plays a crucial role in making the
integration of the system seamless and feasible. A
Fractal O.S. uses a no: of features to achieve these
goals.
1. Transparent data communication
2. Data compression at all levels
3. Awareness of built in self repair.
A Fractal O.S. converts fractally written code into
machine commands for movement. The data signals are
fed to a bus (fractal bus). The electronics have to be
kept simple so that they can be miniaturized. Towards
this end, the Fractal Robot uses principally state logic.
So its internal design consists if ROM, RAM and
some counters
3.4. Fractal Bus
This is an important and pioneering advancement
for fractal computer technology. A Fractal bus permits
Hardware and software to merge seamlessly into one
unified data-structure. It helps in sending and receiving
fractally controlled data.
Computer software controls the shaping of objects
that are synthesized by moving cubes around. To reduce
the flow of instructions the message is broadcast to a
local machine that controls a small number of cubes
(typically around 100 cubes). All cubes communicate
using a simple number scheme. Each is identified in
advance and then a number is assigned. The first time
around, the whole message and the number is sent but
the next time only the number is sent.
IV. MOVEMENT ALGORITHMS
There are many mechanical designs for
constructing cubes, and cubes come in different sizes,
but the actual movement method is always the same.
Regardless of complexity, the cubes move only
between integer positions and only obey commands to
move left, right, up, down, forward and backward. If it
can't perform an operation, it simply reverses back. If it
can't do that as well, the software initiates self repair
algorithms. There are only three basic movement
methods.
 Pick and place
 N-streamers
 L-streamers
Pick and place is easy to understand. Commands
are issued to a collection of cubes telling each cube
where to go. A command of "cube 517 move left by 2
positions" results in only one cube moving in the entire
machine. Entire collection of movements needed to
perform particular operations are worked out and stored
exactly like conventional robots store movement paths.
(Paint spraying robots use this technique.)
However there are better structured ways to storing
movement patterns. It turns out that all movements
other than pick and place are variations of just two
basic schemes called the N-streamer and L-streamer.
N-streamer is easy to understand. A rod is pushed
out from a surface, and then another cube is moved into
the vacant position. The new cube is joined to the tail of
the growing rod and pushed out again to grow the rod.
The purpose of the rod is to grow a 'tentacle'. Once a
tentacle is grown, other robots can be directed to it and
move on top of it to reach the other side. For bridge

International Journal on Theoretical and Applied Research in Mechanical Engineering (IJTARME)
ISSN : 2319 – 3182, Volume-2, Issue-4, 2013
105
building applications, the tentacles are grown vertically
to make tall posts.
V. SELF REPAIR
For this scheme to work, the cube has to be
partially dismantled and then re-assembled at a custom
robot assembly station. The cubic robot is normally
built from six plates that have been bolted together.
Fig. 3 : Conveyor system
To save on space and storage, when large numbers
of cubes are involved, these plates mechanisms can be
stacked onto a conveyor belt system and assembled into
the whole unit by robotic assembly station as notionally
illustrated in figure. (By reversing the process, fractal
robots can be dismantled and stored away until needed.)
If any robotic cubes are damaged, they can be
brought back to the assembly station by other robotic
cubes, dismantled into component plates, tested and
then re-assembled with plates that are fully operational.
Potentially all kinds of things can go wrong and whole
cubes may have to be discarded in the worst case. But
based on probabilities, not all plates are likely to be
damaged, and hence the resilience of this system is
much improved over self repair by cube level
replacement.
VI. APPLICATIONS OF FRACTAL ROBOTS
1. Bridge building
2. Fire Fighting
3. Defense Technology
4. Earthquake Application
5. Medical Application
6. Space Application
VII. LIMITATIONS
1. Technology is still in infancy
2. Current cost is very high($1000 per cube for the 1st
generation of cubes, after which it will reduce to
$100 or so).
3. Needs very precise & flexible controlling software
VIII. CONCLUSION
It may take about 4-5 years for this technology to
be introduced and tried out all over the world. But once
the first step is taken and its advantages well understood
it will not take much time for it to be used in our
everyday life. Using Fractal Robots will help in saving
economy; time etc and they can be used even for the
most sensitive tasks.
Also the raw materials needed are cheap, making it
affordable for developing nations also. This promises to
revolutionize technology in a way that has never been
witnessed before.
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