Scientists are now developing Transformers like shape shifting robots that can change shape with the flick of a switch. What these miniature robots can do is mimic ant like behavior. Ants alone are incapable to do monumental work but as a team they are unrivaled multi taskers. Swarms of robots that use electromagnetic forces to cling together and assume different shapes are being developed by US researchers. The grand goal is to create swarms of microscopic robots capable of morphing into virtually any form by clinging together. Seth Goldstein, who leads the research project at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, in the US, admits this is still a distant prospect. However, his team is using simulations to develop control strategies for futuristic shape-shifting, or "claytronic", robots, which they are testing on small groups of more primitive, pocket-sized machines. These prototype robots use electromagnetic forces to maneuver themselves, communicate, and even share power. Rob Reid at the US Air Force Research Lab is collaborating with the Carnegie Mellon team to develop even smaller prototype robots. Reid and colleagues can fold flat silicon shapes into 3D forms as little as a few hundred microns diameter.

"We will drive those using electric forces too, by patterning circuits and devices into the silicon design," Goldstein says. He predicts that by the summer of 2008 they will have prototypes capable of rolling themselves around this way.
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