Digital materials: systems built from voxels
Digital (modular) materials are based on the construction of systems from individual building units – so-called voxels. These can be freely assembled, reconfigured, and easily transported or assembled on site. In MIT laboratories, these units are used to create, for example, metamaterials, new types of drives, and self-replicating robotic systems. The Czech team is continuing with the development of advanced control algorithms and robotic platforms that can build and control these structures.
Presentation of projects from FEE at MIT
Jiří Zemánek worked at CBA in 2019/2020 as a Fulbright–Masaryk scholar. He and his team are now building on this experience. During this year's visit to the laboratory, students from FEE presented their projects:
● Voxteriér – a four-legged robot made of modular voxels (Filip Korf)
● Drobek – a robot for assembling voxel structures (Filip Hudec)
● Systems for damping flexible modular structures (Josef Trdla)
During the visit, in collaboration with American colleagues, especially Alfonso Parra Rubio, a demonstration origami robot called Pufferfish was created, composed of a lightweight folded structure. Czech students Adam Hendrych and Michal Varsanyi, who are completing the Czech version of the famous course at FEE, were publicly praised by Professor Gershenfeld himself. He cited their work as an inspiration for his own MIT students, which underscores the quality of Czech education in the field of digital manufacturing.
The program also included informal events and expert discussions, such as a dinner with Professor Gershenfeld, David Perry from the RAI Institute led by Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert, and Robert Hart from Harvard University.
PhD student Krištof Pučejdl then stayed at MIT for a month-long internship, during which he worked on new types of drives for voxels and actuated folded structures.
The MIT team visited Prague
But it didn't stop with trips to the US. In the summer, a team from MIT led by Neil Gershenfeld visited Prague. Together with Alan Han, Quentin Bolse, Dimitar Dimitrov, and Lee McElroy, they toured the laboratories of the departments of computer science, cybernetics, and control engineering and planned further joint projects with Jiří Zemánek's group. Professor Gershenfeld also gave a public lecture in Prague entitled From Bits to Atoms, and students of the course How to Make (Almost) Anything presented their projects at the international conference FABx as part of the Fab Festival.
