USC's reconfigurable robots have a future in space: Scientists present 'superbot modules' at New Mexico conference.

To the layman, Wei-Min Shen's latest creation looks like a Transformer toy and acts like a sand beetle.

To the scientists, engineers and space experts who gathered in Albuquerque, N.M., last week, Shen's "suberbot modules" might look like the future.

Shen is a research engineer who, with Peter Willis, beads the polymorphic robotic laboratory at the USC Information Sciences Institute. He made his presentation on the robots at the Space Technology and Applications International Forum.

In addition to their size--they'd fit in your palm--and their ability to reconfigure themselves to suit the task at hand "Transformer"-style, what distinguishes Shen's robots is how they adapt to Earth's most hostile environments, such as deep ocean sites or the North and South poles. Shen and his colleagues have tested the robots, which possess an internal computer mainframe, in various environments, such as climbing a sand dune or swimming through a pond.

"Reconfigurable and multifunctional robots can greatly increase the adaptability of future space robots with a much lower cost," Shen wrote in an abstract describing the lecture.

Shen has been shooting movies of the superbot modules as they traverse challenging regions and terrain.

"You drop a bag full of these things into the desert," said ISI spokesman Eric Mankin, "and they pull themselves up into whatever needs to be done to climb a dune."

To see the robots in action, go to http://www.isi.edu/robots/.