A computer without electricity? Mechanical computing concept 'could help improve people's lives' with all sorts of potential real-world uses | Tech Radar

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Researchers in the US have built a mechanical computer

It's made from metal bars and springs, and is capable of basic computing operations

This might pave the way for important technological advances, and 'could help improve people's lives by having more responsive artificial limbs or tactile rooms'

Can you build a PC from springs and metal bars, which operates entirely mechanically, without any electricity? No, of course you can't, but it is possible to fashion such a device that is capable of basic computations and doesn't need any power supplied at all.

Interesting Engineering highlighted a project by researchers from St Olaf College and Syracuse University, which has been published in the science journal Nature.

The paper, titled 'Mechanical hysterons with tunable interactions of general sign', describes a mechanical computing platform that uses connected steel bars and springs.

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Joey Paulsen, who is Associate Professor of Physics at St Olaf College, explains: "We typically think of memory as something in a computer hard drive, or within our brains. However, many everyday materials retain some kind of memory of their past – for example, rubber can 'remember' how far it has been squeezed or stretched in the past.

"The research team wanted to understand if we could use everyday materials to not only remember movement but also process information — or compute."

This is indeed possible, as the scientists were able to build three mechanical computers.

The first project could count (up to three), and a second computer was capable of determining whether it had been pushed an odd or even number of times. A third was designed to remember if a medium or large amount of force had been applied to it, and all without a battery in sight.

Rotors next, then onwards and upwards from there?

Obviously, these initial inventions are relatively basic, and while it's impressive to build anything capable of functional computing out of simple bits of metal — which has, of course, been done in the distant past — it may leave you wondering what the point of all this is, aside from the novelty of such a mechanical platform.

Well, firstly there could be a lot to build on here in terms of combining these kinds of mechanical innovations. One of the next steps forward for the researchers will be to look at scalability here. (They are now testing how the state of one rotor affects its interaction with a second rotor, with a view to adding a third).

Mechanical computing platforms may have serious real-world applications too, notably in harsh environments where traditional solutions won't work or even survive. For example, in the case of extreme heat, a mechanical computer could operate in scenarios where silicon chips would melt.

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Paulsen notes: "Our results are one step towards designing materials that can sense their environment, make a decision, and then respond. Frequently called smart materials, what we learned could help improve people's lives by having more responsive artificial limbs or tactile rooms."

This isn't the first time such concepts have been explored in the contemporary tech world. A couple of years ago, scientists at North Carolina State University created a mechanical computer design which used a series of plastic cubes that were pushed and pulled to input, store, and work with data.

Now, a computer made of plastic cubes – what does that remind me of? Oh yes, that rather nifty PC built out of Lego bricks from earlier this week…

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for Tech Radar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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