The Kilobot Project: A Low Cost Scalable Robot System for Demonstrating Collective Behaviors
August 15th, 2014Here’s one for your This-Will-End-Badly file folder.
Via: Harvard:
In current robotics research there is a vast body of work on algorithms and control methods for groups of decentralized cooperating robots, called a swarm or collective. These algorithms are generally meant to control collectives of hundreds or even thousands of robots; however, for reasons of cost, time, or complexity, they are generally validated in simulation only, or on a group of a few 10s of robots. To address this issue, we designed the Kilobot, a low-cost robot designed to make testing collective algorithms on hundreds or thousands (“kilos”) of robots accessible to robotics researchers. Each robot has the basic capabilities required for a swarm robot, but is made with low-cost parts, and is mostly assembled by an automated process. In addition, the system design allows a single user to easily and scalably operate a large Kilobot collective, such as programming, powering on, and charging all robots. systems.
We are now using the Kilobot swarm to investigate algorithms for robust collective behavior, such as collective transport, human-swarm interaction, and shape self-assembly, as well as new theory that links individual robot capabilities to acheivable swarm behaviors. See our publications and movies to learn more about this research.
