American specialists have shown the world a mechanical computer that works without electricity. In the course of the work, the engineers, according to their admission, received inspiration from the Japanese art of kirigami.

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The prototype presented the day before contains 64 polymer cubes of 1 cm³, which can be rearranged for storage/retrieval /delete data. Cubes represent bits of binary data, and its position can change to represent 1 or 0.

Any of the cubes can be moved vertically/horizontally, allowing you to change the configuration of the PC to present information in a physical form. This allows the system to be used to encrypt/decrypt data and form sensor systems for 3D environments.

Mechanical computers have been around for a long time, but the new concept uses kirigami principles for more flexible and compact control. Rearranging one cube changes the position of all connected elements, which allows you to change the configuration and state of the device.

According to the project's lead author Yangbin Li, metastructures of 9 functional blocks can have more than 362,000 possible configurations. The data is controlled by the tension of the elastic band, which fixes the cubes in the required positions. Cubes can also move with the help of a magnetic field.

Researchers are considering the possibility of complicating calculations with cubes by giving them the ability to accept states 1 or 0, but also 2, 3, 4.

More the development team will consider working with programmers to create code that can use these architectures.