These are some of the first steps toward creating huge herds of tiny robots that form larger structures—including bigger robots. Building swarming robots can also help scientists understand collective behavior seen in nature, from bird flocks and fish schools to networks of cells and neurons.
In the past, researchers have only been able to program at most a couple hundred robots to work together. Now, researchers at Harvard University have programmed the biggest robot swarm yet.
“It’s really a big accomplishment,” said roboticist Hod Lipson of Cornell University, who wasn’t involved in the work. “It’s the first demonstration of this swarm robotic behavior at the scale of 1,000 physical robots.” Getting even tens or a hundred robots to work together is difficult, with a lot of algorithmic and technical challenges, he says.
Fancy robots with wheels, odometers, orientation sensors, and cameras can make self-assembly easier, said Mike Rubenstein, the roboticist who led the research team. “But if it’s too complicated, you can’t build a thousand robots.” That would be too expensive and difficult. At the same time, if you make your robots too simple, their capabilities become too limited. “So there’s a difficult trade-off.”
A “K” shape self-assembled by 1024 Kilobot robots. Michael Rubenstein, Harvard University
The researchers used robots they designed and built called Kilobots, which aren’t much bigger than a penny. Each one costs $14 in parts and only takes a few minutes to put together—you can even order some for yourself. To program them all at once, the researchers beam down instructions via an infrared light from an overhead controller. The robots communicate with one another by sending and receiving infrared signals. The team programmed 1,024 of these robots to gather into the shape of a star, the letter “K,” and a wrench (watch the robots at work in the video below).
via-wired
via-wired
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