I read a story today about a plan to create planet lander craft in the form of kites.
Today’s invention takes this a step further.
Imagine dropping large numbers of flat-sheet kites over any planet with an atmosphere.
These would glide down -each landing very gently.
The kites would each have a small electric vehicle attached to one corner, allowing them to move across the ground and self-assemble at one location.
Each kite would act as a single layer in a 3D printed electromechanical machine -potentially of great size and complexity.
This would then drive off and perform some mission, without ever having been shaken up on impact with the ground.
check – http://www.gizmag.com/distributed-flight-array-self-assembling-multicopter/28380/ –
Yep that is certainly uber-cool…I was thinking that kites could form a stack, like a pile of paper. Each ‘page’ would have a layer of several components etched into it that would talk to neighbouring layers…as these communicate and lock together a 3D form would emerge. Each layer of a component could be surrounded by a small number of perforations, like a stamp. When 3D components had formed, they could force themselves apart so that discrete machines would be created.