Robosynthesis is a UK-based company offering a system of plug and play modular robotics. The system is based around core components designed to give you a scalable, flexible and fully customised robot at the end.

It’s a system that’s designed to be used without tools, so that you can easily swap parts over to change the capabilities of your robot. Assembly is quick and fast, with Robosysthesis telling us that you could assemble it in under 2 minutes. It has been designed to be simple enough to use without training, so it is effectively robotics for dummies.

The idea is to present a robot system that gives you complete flexibility, so rather than building a number of robots to perform specific tasks, you could construct the ‘bots on demand from the Robosynthesis kit.

We caught up with Robosynthesis at the Defence & Security Equipment International expo, which gives you a clue to the potential market they see their system tapping into.

Bjorn Christiansen, commercial director of Robosynthesis, told us that the concept started out with the toy market in mind along the lines of the Lego Mindstorm toys. From there the concept evolved to the present form, but Christiansen believes the future will see a return to a toy system.

Currently Robosynthesis has its sights set on military, security, medical and industrial applications, with the system offering remote or autonomous control options. Of course, being a modular system, you can add or remove different tools, be that cameras or arms, as the situation demands.

It's easy to see the appeal: if you want to inspect under something, you just build the right robot for the job. If you need to investigate a suspicious package or explore a building, then that's what you make.

Putting a price on a system like this is difficult, as Christiansen said it will be "priced to market" and with their core market in mind we take that to mean "a lot".

So until we see Robosynthesis appear on the shelves of a toy shop, this is one cool modular robotics system we’ll have to live without.