Scientists investigate "swarm" robots

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 13 Mar 2008 at 12:03

Scientists have been awarded £4.6 million by the European Union to develop the next generation of intelligent robots.

The money has been awarded to the Symbrion project, a pan-European effort of ten universities that aims to create a swarm of tiny robots, each the size of a sugar cube, which are able to dock with each other to share information and cooperate to perform certain tasks.

"We may be able to use the collaborative power of many robots in situations where human intervention isn't possible," says Dr Jon Timmis, a researcher of the University of York, which is participating in the project. "A Symbrion swarm could be released into a collapsed building following an earthquake, and form themselves into teams to lift rubble or search for survivors."

Among its other abilities the swarm will also have an artificial immune system which will communicate damage to the individual robots back to the collective, so that the other robots can arrange repairs.

The funding for the project will continue until 2013, at which point the team says a prototype of the system involving a few hundred robots should be ready for testing. Scientists believe the swarm could be ready for commercial use between ten and 15 years from now.

Researchers say the future applications of the technology could include space exploration and medicine, however, with the robots able to learn and adapt to whatever situation is put before them the possibilities are endless.

In the Symbrian project's own words,"[we envisage] artificial robotic organisms become self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimising and self-protecting from both hardware and software perspectives. This leads not only to extremely adaptive, evolve-able and scalable robotic systems, but also enables robot organisms to reprogram themselves without human supervision and for new, previously unforeseen, functionality to emerge."