joshbyard:

Teaching Robots How to Spin a Web

As Nick Barber of IDG News reports, the Mediated Matter Group at MIT’s Media Lab is working on a robot it hopes will one day be able to scan its surroundings and weave a structure that’s attached to elements in the environment.

The machine isn’t able to do this just yet, but… it can be preprogrammed to weave a pretty mean web using pegs and hooks that it’s been told the positions of.

The researchers, who also study 3D printing, drop phrases like “additive manufacturing processes” and say that eventually they’ll replace the yarn shown in the video with nylon that will harden once it’s put in place. One can imagine manufacturing or construction methods that involve a machine that works with a given physical framework to create custom designs.

“We’re working on the sensing so it knows where it’s going on its own,” Research Assistant Elizabeth Tsai says in a short article by Barber.

(via MIT’s web-spinning robot: Be very afraid? | Cutting Edge – CNET News)