VIDEO - Self-constructing robots radically advance robotics and mass production technology

Harvard's origami-like self-assembling miniature robots are pushing mass production technology and robotics towards a bonafide futuristic quantum leap. By finely tuned and precise use of locking mechanisms and dip soldering, it is now possible to automate subtle machine processes with far more materials -- like polymers, ceramics and metals -- than previously possible. Microfabrication stands to make the most immediate gains, as the layering process builds on the current one used for printed circuit boards -- optical systems and other electromechanical systems can also be created better. On a fundamental level, as Caroline Perry so eloquently put it on Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences website, "Essentially, tiny robots can now be built by slightly bigger robots."