The new mechanical computer has no electronic components, consisting only of 64 interconnected polymer cubes for data processing.
This mechanical computer is inspired by kirigami art. (Video: Yin Lab)
Scientists have created a mechanical computer inspired by kirigami, the Japanese art of folding and cutting paper, as reported by Live Science on July 4. The research was published in the journal Science Advances.
The experimental computer contains no electronic components. The machine consists of 64 polymer cubes, each with a volume of 1cm3, that are interconnected and can be rearranged to store, retrieve, and delete data. Similar to kirigami, the computer can be adjusted into various configurations and states.
Each cube represents a single binary data bit, which can be pushed up or down to represent 1 and 0, respectively. Rearranging the cubes changes the configuration of the computer, allowing information to be stored or represented physically.
The new computer could help create physical encoding-decoding systems and even develop manual control systems for 3D environments. “For example, a specific configuration of functional units could serve as a 3D password. We are also interested in exploring the potential uses of these superstructures to create tactile systems capable of displaying information in 3D environments instead of as pixels on a screen,” stated Yanbin Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University and the lead author of the study.
The system is capable of computing more complex than binary code.
Mechanical computers have existed for centuries, likely dating back to the second century BC, long before modern algorithms and programming languages were developed. However, at that time, humans operated them using gears and levers, making them quite bulky.
With the new computer, changing the position of one cube alters the layout of all interconnected cubes, which means changing the computer’s configuration to accommodate different computational states. “Using a binary framework – where cubes are either above or below – a simple superstructure consisting of 9 functional units can have over 362,000 configurations,” Li explained.
The research team noted that the system is capable of computing more complex values than binary code, with cubes that can represent not only 0 and 1 but also 2, 3, and 4. “Each functional unit within the 64 cubes can be arranged into many types of layouts, and the cubes can stack up to 5 high,” co-author Jie Yin, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University, elaborated.
In the future, the research team hopes to collaborate with programmers to develop software for the computer. “Our experimental prototype has demonstrated the potential of these structures, but we have yet to develop software to harness them. We want to collaborate with other researchers to explore the encoding potential of these superstructures,” Li shared.
