New, Tiny Robots With no Memory

New, Tiny Robots With no Memory

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

Like the birds and the bees: Tiny robots, simple and cheap, who operate in large groups without any memory capability.

2045419_TE_robots featureCould a large group of tiny robots carry out missions without memory? British engineers from the University of Sheffield found an innovative solution, based on one already existing in the wild for millions of years.

According to The Engineering periodical, a group of researchers from Sheffield University robotics lab programmed a cluster of tiny, relatively simple robots, so that they could act as a group with no need for complex processing power – by mimicking methods used by bird flocks and bee swarms.

In their report, published in the International Journal of Robotics Research, they explained that the development opens a path for using robot clusters for missions such as moving through environments too dangerous for humans, or other agricultural and medical missions. Industries in all these areas will need cheap, simple robots in the future. The scientists at Sheffield programmed 40 robots to act as a tightly-knit group, and through computer simulations concluded that the same method can be used for clusters with thousands of robots.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

How does it work? Every robot uses just one sensor, which tells the tiny machine if it can or can’t locate a neighboring robot in front or to the side. The robot then proceeds to rotate in place or move around in a circle until it locates the next robot. In this way the robots can move in formation even without memory or mathematical-algorithmic processing capabilities. Until now robot clusters required advanced programming capabilities, which made it very difficult to miniaturize them.

Lab director Roderich Gross: “In the future we’ll be able to send thousands of robots out on missions like exploring locations too dangerous for humans, for example, or measuring pollution levels in an environment. We’ve proved that in order to form a cluster these robots do not require computing power or memory.” For the next phase of development the scientists are trying to “teach” the robot clusters to communicate with other objects in their environment.

Source: AUVSI website.