MNS robots currently operate in two dimensions and are limited to rigid connections. In the future, the research team intends to extend the concept to self-configurable modular robots that operate in three dimensional spaces and consider flexible joints. The team’s long term vision is to design and build robots capable of autonomously building other robots of the shape and size most suitable to their environments or the task at hand.
Before joining Netcetera, Nithin Mathews was a researcher at IRIDIA – the artificial intelligence research laboratory of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Nithin Mathews conducted the research behind MNS robots together with his colleagues from Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Instituto Universitàrio de Lisboa (Portugal), and Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). He spent four years researching on this particular subject. The basic technologies and robots used for experimentation took over 10 years to be developed. Netcetera contributed to this success story by providing Nithin Mathews with an educational budget that allowed him to finalize the publication of his extensive research work. The research article was officially published by Nature Communications under an open access license model on 12 September 2017 and has been featured on popular science outlets including Science News, Engadget, TechCrunch, Popular Science and the Wall Street Journal (see video below).