Watch a swarm of 300 robots reorganize autonomously
Watch a swarm of 300 robots reorganize autonomously
By: Kelsey D. Atherton
December 23, 2018
By sensing and changing with the environment, robots are
able to assemble into formations through individual action. (Screenshot by
Kelsey D. Atherton)
Against the white void, the assembled robots look like
nothing so much as ball bearings with Christmas lights on.
This is a mass of kilobots, minimalistic robots that each
contain an LED light, a vibrating motor and the ability to communicate with
other nearby kilobots via infrared signals. And after a human tears a swath
through their assembled clusters, the robots organically, intuitively,
autonomously reform into a similar shape, guided by nothing so much as its own
basic rules.
The experiment, by a team of researchers in Spain, the UK
and the Netherlands, posits a simple question: Robotic swarms scan as intense,
complex things, but what if people can engineer them to work together as simply
as cells in organic matter?
To make the swarm work, the robots are assembled in a
mass and given a flexible state. Following their coding, the robots learn how
they are alike and different from the robots near them, then move to cluster
with robots of a certain state, and then adjust to see if they are clustered as
they should be.
In appearance, this means tiny blue robots vibrating to
be closer to clusters of tiny green robots, with those on the periphery of the
clusters forming a sort of natural teal halo. This works both for the robots
left undisturbed and actively disturbed, the dense green clusters reforming
like tissue stitching over a wound.
Robotic swarms are compelling for researchers, civilian
and military alike, because they offer functionality through interchangeable
components. Much of the promise of swarm robotics wants the machines to be as
cheap and disposable as possible, while the swarm as a whole is still capable
of performing tasks, even when components fail.
“Loss of robots can occur for a variety of reasons — loss
of digital infrared (IR) messages, inaccuracy in distance estimation, and
unreliable movements of robots — all of which relate to the general lack of
reliability of these relatively simple, cheap kilobots,” the researchers write.
“Despite this, the swarm as a whole continued to control
its global shape, even when reduced to less than one-third of its original size
or when physically ‘damaged.’”
For now, research like this kilobot swarm assembly will
remain in the lab, but the potential implications of cheap robots that can
communicate and coordinate as effectively and simply as demonstrated here could
be huge. Everything from structure reassembly to patterns of self-healing armor
to autonomous scouting clusters could potentially be derived from studies like
this.
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