Spectrum article on modular reconfigurable robots

While itís not nanotechnology, an article in the February 2002 issue of the IEEE Spectrum deals with research into robotics that may eventually be useful in designing swarms of nano-scale robots. "Modular Robots", by Mark Yim, Ying Zhang and David Duff from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) describe the challenges of designing robots capable of operating outdoors, away from civilization, where both mission and geography are unpredictable. "Here," they authors maintain, "robots with the ability to change their shape could be of great value, since they could adapt to constantly varying tasks and environments. Modular reconfigurable robots — experimental systems made by interconnecting multiple, simple, similar units–can perform such shape shifting."
The article deals mainly with their own work on PolyBot, a modular robot being developed at Xerox PARC, but makes brief mention of work at other labs as well.