Posts Tagged ‘robot swarms’
Video: Flying, Spying, Rolling, Climbing, and Rappelling Robots Team Up to Form: Swarmanoid!
For starters, a handful of “eye-bots” reconnoiters the area, establishing where things are and--most importantly for this task--the location of a book that Swarmanoid has been instructed to retrieve. Then the rest of the system swings into action. A team of “foot-bots” figure the best way to get to the book and set up a communication network linking the whole system from its point of origin to the location of the book.
Then two “foot-bots” attach themselves to the “hand-bot” and tow it to the book, which is perched on a shelf above floor level. Will Swarmanoid succeed in its mission? We wouldn’t spoil the thrilling climax after all this build-up. Video below.
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Use Microsoft Surface to Control a Swarm of Robots With Your Fingertips
Mark Micire, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, proposes using Surface, Microsoft's interactive tabletop, to unite various types of data, robots and other smart technologies around a common goal. It seems so obvious and so simple, you have to wonder why this type of technology is not already widespread.
In earlier this week, Micire showed off a demo of his swarm-control interface, which you can watch below.
You can tap, touch and drag little icons to command individual robots or robot swarms. You can leave a trail of crumbs for them to follow, and you can draw paths for them in a way that looks quite like Flight Control, one of our favorite iPod/iPad games. To test his system, Micire steered a four-wheeled vehicle through a plywood maze.
The system can integrate a variety of data sets, like city maps, building blueprints and more. You can pan and zoom in on any map point, and you can even integrate video feeds from individual robots so you can see things from their perspective.
As Micire describes it, current disaster-response methods can’t automatically compile and combine information to search for patterns. A smart system would integrate data from all kinds of sources, including commanders, individuals and robots in the field, computer-generated risk models, and more.
Emergency responders might not have the time or opportunity to get in-depth training on new technologies, so a simple touchscreen control system like this would be more useful. At the very least, it seems like a much more intuitive way to control future robot armies.
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Video: Insect-Like Pincers Allow Flying Swarmbots To Perch On Nearly Any Surface
Working out of Switzerland's , Kovac's mechanism uses two needles mounted to the front of a small glider or robo-copter. When extended, the 'bot can fly straight into the surface it intends for its perch--no additional landing maneuver's necessary. When it's time to take off again, an electric motor and gearbox connected to the needles pulls them out, and flight resumes. Kovac claims the needles work on a variety of different surfaces, including concrete and wood. The whole assembly weighs just 4.6 grams.
What would you do with a swarm of lightweight, autonomous, sensor-laden flying robots? That's the question currently being considered by countless government agencies, research institutions, Bond supervillains--everyone--as miniature robotics systems continue their march onwards.