Cheap, Swarming Kilobots Bring Us Closer to a Bot-Filled World (video)

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.