Swarm robots are like ants: useless alone, but effective as a group.

Quick, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you read the phrase “robotic swarm”? A nefarious group of robots on a devious mission? How about miniature robots working to rescue trapped people after a natural disaster? Either way, exciting research at the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group at Harvard University aims to make robotic swarms cheap enough for the masses. Led by Dr. Radhika Nagpal, the Kilobot Project aims to provide researchers building algorithms to control a large group of cooperating robots with actual swarms of robots with which to test and refine their algorithms. Currently, various factors including cost and complexity have relegated testing of these algorithms to the digital world, i.e computer simulations. But thankfully, no longer! Costing a mere $14 per robot and taking just five minutes to assemble, kilobots are cheap and simple to obtain. What’s more, they can all be programmed simultaneously, meaning that there’s no need to waste time sending commands to a thousand robots one at a time! Watch these tiny bots doing what they do best in the videos below. They might seem simplistic at this point, but keep in mind that these bots are early in development. Their full potential will only be realized after a few more years of R&D.

At first glance, it may seem like these kilobots are just for fun. Why would a tiny, desktop robot that moves around be important? Well, the goal of swarm robotics is to allow a large number of robots to work together on the same task. Think of robots working in a mine or tiny nanobots that will have medical uses. There are an endless number of potential applications from building 3D models to working in search and rescue or even just playing capture the flag. Just like a human team at work, effective and clear communication among the team members is critical to getting the job done right. It’s no different when you have robots working together, and the Kilobot Project will allow this field to move forward in a meaningful way. I was fascinated by these tiny, mechanical creatures moving around to complete their given task. I can’t wait to see how we eventually use them in our everyday lives!

[Image credits: Gadget Cage]
[Video credits: Harvard University Self-Organizing Systems Research Group]

Where's that food...oh, it's with my blue friends over there.

Oh what a tangled web a robot weaves when it first practices to deceive. S-bots, the swarm bots developed in Lausanne, Switzerland at EPFL were shown to evolve communication skills over time. The S-bots rose to infamy earlier when a video was made of them pulling a child across a room (see below). In the pursuit of virtual food, and the avoidance of virtual poison, S-bots developed different means to signal their colonies…and learned to hide those signals from others. Helped along by selection criteria from researchers, the evolving S-bots helped demonstrate that evolution could be a helpful tool in robotics just as it is in biology. Check out the videos of S-bots finding food, and working together after the break.

In order to simulate evolution, the S-bots were given innate preferences for food, and avoidance of poison. They were also programmed with random movements, their genome if you will. Successful robots (who ate food not poison) were recombined in a mimicking of sexual reproduction. Over 500 such generations of bots were first simulated in computer then demonstrated with machines. At first, each robot produced lights randomly, this created an increase in light around food (where robots tended to congregate). S-bots learned to look for light to find food, and then to signal others when they found food, and also to avoid signaling when competing for food. That control of communication is not only a great tool for the bots, it demonstrates how a natural selection process can lead to cunning, even in machines.

As you can see in the video, the S-bots begin to congregate around the apple station, and mostly avoid the skull and cross bones station. As more robots find the apple, changing colors signal to other bots that there is food nearby. Similar signaling can help S-bots move a load as a group that no one bot could pull on its own:

Unfortunately, these swarm robots haven’t received much press recently, with no papers published since 2007 (though we did mention them in an earlier post). Still, what EPFL accomplished with the S-bots is certainly impressive. The creation of cooperating robots that can use guile…that’s got to look good on any engineer’s resume. And it’s not like anything can go wrong with that. Right?…

[photo and video credits: New Scientist, EPFL]

Just to give you an idea of how small I-Swarm robots actually are.

While many robots find success by mimicking humans, there’s a whole set of robotics dedicated to imitating ants and bees. We’ve seen some of these swarm-bots before, but none of them have the microscopic success of I-Swarm. A multinational project of the EC, I-Swarm has built tiny self-contained robots capable of communication and joint action. These little guys may be miniature, but I-Swarm hopes that, in numbers, they could accomplish almost any physical task. Check out the cool pics and a brief video after the break.

While human scale robots can do some impressive things, tiny insect-like bots are capable of much more. Working in groups of hundreds, thousands, or millions, swarm bots will one day be able to construct objects at the microscopic level or break them down to the same degree. If built on a nano-scale, swarm robots may be able to fight diseases, construct miniature computer chips, and maintain equipment in a near-perfect state. I-Swarm is taking an important step in realizing these goals by integrating many of the necessary parts all in the same tiny package.

I-Swarm is similar to other swarm robots we’ve reviewed before, but the completeness of their system is impressive. They’ve got actuators, micro solar cells, mini wireless communication devices, IC chips, and optics sensors all within their tiny frames. Except for the inability to reproduce and the lack of a robust manipulator, I-Swarm bots are pretty much ideal swarm robots.

That proboscic looks like it should do something cool.

Of course, it’s the lack of manipulation that is a little surprising. After all, I-Swarm stands for intelligent small-world autonomous robots for micro manipulation. Exploring their website, I couldn’t find a demonstration of manipulation, though it’s clear from the photos that the proboscis-like front appendage is supposed to function in that manner.

I-Swarm robots will be able to be programmed through their optical module.

Still, the locomotion module video is clearly impressive – the microscopic motion of the legs is pretty much invisible. The scale of the different modules is also extraordinary. That optical sensor is miniscule, but it is sensitive enough to work as a programming interface. I-Swarm has experimented with instructing their bots with high speed pulses of intense light. Such a system would not only avoid redundancy in the hardware, it would also allow an operator to instruct the entire swarm at once. Cool idea.

There are, of course, many competing programs, such as MiCRon, in the race to create the first fully functional swarm of robots. Most are still trying to perfect the individual members of the swarm, so it’s hard to determine if there will be a clear winner soon. I-Swarm’s tiny size shows that most, if not all, the necessary hardware can fit into a much smaller space than some would anticipate. Future generations of swarm robotics, from I-Swarm or elsewhere, will only get smaller in size and more versatile in accomplishments.

I can’t wait until these things start being able to construct copies of themselves and other devices. When that happens, we will be looking at a new age of manufacturing. Unless the swarm goes all killer-bee and turns on its creators. Just in case, I’m learning how to use a flashlight to say, “ctrl-alt-del.”

The I-Swarm website has a kids section. Here the wacky adventures the swarm may go on in the future.

[Photo Credits: I-Swarm and P. Corrack]

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