The tech will not hurt manufacturing jobs but is likely to help reduce the cost of production through advanced automation.

Although MIT had created history when it made a self-assembling chair, but given its stature, one can hardly expect it to rest on its laurels. MIT has now a more ambitious project in mind: self-assembling smartphones.

MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab is looking forward to putting a handful of components in a rotating tumbler which could magically come together so as to create a complete working cellphone said a report from Fast Company.

Click here if you want to see this magic in action.

According to Skylar Tibbits, who co-runs the lab, the inspiration for the project came from MIT’s DIY cellphone project which involved using parts whose worth ranged from $100 to $200 for building a fairly simple phone.

Tibbits took this concept and stretched it even further so as to create a fully functional phone without the help of a robot or even a human. Believe it or not, so far, the team has managed to get six components to come together so as to create two separate phones.

Naturally, designing the self-assembling components can be pretty challenging. The tumbler, wherein the components are placed, has to move so that the components are juggled together but not so slowly that they just nudge each other and not so fast that knock against each other and break apart. Furthermore, the components need to be juggled so that their right contact point come together and remain secured. For now, MIT is using magnets for this task.

Although currently the prototype looks like a cellphone from a bygone era, the fact that it is self-assembling phone by itself if pretty jaw dropping.

Before you jump and say this technology could hurt manufacturing jobs, Tidbits has clarified that it will do no such thing. However, what it can do is lower the cost of production through automation.