With just three Cubelets—a Battery Cubelet for power, a Drive Cubelet for movement, and a Flashlight Cubelet to glow with presence—students can watch as simple actions spark emergent behaviors. One Cubelet makes the robot move, another signals its existence, and together they form the foundation for something greater. When multiple Cubelet-based robots interact, patterns emerge: random walks transform into collective behaviors, self-organization takes shape, and new “organisms” are formed.

The brilliance of this demonstration is that it shows how complex systems don’t require complicated parts. Instead, they arise from simple interactions. Whether we’re studying the spread of a virus, migration patterns, or even daily traffic flow, the same lesson applies: complexity grows from simplicity.

For educators, Cubelets offer a tangible way to guide students through these big ideas. By starting with small builds and gradually scaling up to group experiments, students can:

• • See self-organization in action as their robots connect, combine, and evolve.

• • Draw parallels to real-world systems, from ecosystems to social networks.

• • Ask deeper questions about cause, effect, and unpredictability in natural and human-made systems.

Like a baby octopus learning to swim, the journey begins with small movements that lead to surprising complexity. And with Cubelets, students don’t just read about these systems—they build them, explore them, and watch them evolve before their eyes.

A Parallel Project: Building a Museum of Computing

Alongside their robotics experiments, the lab also created Mexico’s first computer science museum. As Dr. Juárez explains, the country had never had a dedicated museum for computing. Years prior, Harold V. McIntosh built one, but after his passing, it disappeared.

To preserve this history, the lab collected artifacts that showcase the evolution of technology—everything from floppy disks, operating systems, and circuit boards to vintage mobile phones, cassette tapes, early CPUs, projectors, and even old robots and toys. Each donated item contributes to a living archive of computer science, and contributors are honored on the museum’s list of supporters.

The Cubelets experiments and the museum share a common theme: both remind us that innovation builds on the past. Just as simple Cubelets combine to form complex systems, generations of devices—from floppy disks to smartphones—combine to tell the story of human ingenuity.