Robot Swarms
Yesterday James McLurkin, the MIT based leader in the field of distributed robotics, spoke here at Idea Festival.
Distributed robotics is where you take separate robots, program each with simple rules, and attempt to use this method to achieve complex results. It is a little like nature. A single bee is not that smart, but the ability of the hive to act and adapt is phenomenal. We are always trying to imitate the wonders of nature with technology. Nature obtains optimal results with simple rules.
He considers “swarms” to be the future of robotics.
What’s the point? Why have a swarm of robots instead of one big robot? One reason is the a swarm can do things that single robots cannot. For example, a massive search operation in a collapsed building is perfect for a swarm of small robots to team up and search. This is teamwork – for robots.
These distributed robotics experts like James are inspired by behaviors of bees, ants and termites.
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