Collective action robot "Kilobot" who acts in accordance with a certain purpose while communicating with each other

Small sizeFlying robotAnd largeQuadruped walking robotAs evolution of robot development is remarkable, such as. Ordinary robots have been developed as the main theme of acting independently by thinking on the "brain" for receiving thoughts from the outside or thinking behaviors themselves, but the relationship with other robots We are also developing "collective action robots" that can act according to purpose as "group".

Programmable self-assembly in a thousand-robot swarm
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6198/795

Understanding what kind of robot technology "Self-Organizing System" developed by Harvard University is, you can understand it with a single shot by looking at the following movie.

A Swarm of One Thousand Robots - YouTube


"Thousand-robot SwarmWith a technique called "You can order a large group of small robots with over 1000 animals to make a certain formation and move accordingly.


A small robot named "Kilobot" acts while grasping the positional relationship with each other ... ...


I moved to become a type ☆.


Collective behavior of such individuals is common behavior in nature, such as ants and fish flocks. The challenging attempt to apply collective behavior mechanisms to robots is Thousand-robot Swarm.


Kilobot moves with three legs using two vibration motors.


It is possible to communicate with each other by changing the LED light according to the distance to other robots.



Up to 1024 Kilobots can act collectively. It's almost like an army.


Kilobot employs a special algorithm "Self-Assembly Algorithm" that can issue commands to change to a certain form.


As you move according to this algorithm, you can take various forms as you like.


The algorithm includes three basic principles of behavior: "Gradient", "Distributed Coordinate System", "Edge Following" ... ...


A system that keeps a certain distance, a system that detects a broken robot, and a system that complements a broken robot are built in. Thanks to this, even if a robot who failed or lost track of direction appeared, other robots can act like filling up a hole.


First of all, when you group robots that are informed about what kind of formation is taken as "seed robot", the robots gather at the seed robot and share the command while communicating with each other .


When the command gets over, we start moving sequentially from robots that can move outside the group.


We will continue to move in cooperation with each other until it is in accordance with the order.


The robot who entered the camp stands by on the spot until it is ready to move again.


In this way the shape changes steadily and eventually it changes to the indicated form.


First, the flock of Kilobot which was such an arrangement ...


I arranged in this form.


Kilobot was developed by Dr. Nagpal's research team at Harvard University. In addition to Kilobot, the research team can "build" in groupsTermite robotThe development of such as is being advanced.

Development of "termite robot" to judge and act on its own is underway at Harvard University - GIGAZINE