• Question: What applications do you see a robotic swarm having in the future?

    Asked by c.earnshaw to Siobhan on 13 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Siobhan Duncan

      Siobhan Duncan answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Thats a really great question, I could talk for days about swarm 🙂

      I think swarm robots are perfect for complex problems. I’ll mention a couple applications and I’ll post some links to youtube videos 🙂

      So for example a complex problem could be searching a large area, one robot might be able to complete it by itself, but many robots working together could search an area much faster.

      An other example is building, swarm robots could be very good at building houses, bridges, roads etc…, but better than a single or a small number of robots could do it. Termites are the best builders on the planet and they do it in a swarm way that we could learn from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaT0B__2DM

      Swarm robots can be used to connect to each other to create a bigger robot, in a similar way that these ants are holding onto each other to creat a bridge across a gap: https://youtu.be/A4uv27nSaH4?t=1m52s
      This would allow for swarms of small robots to become programmable materials.

      If we can get the robots to be small enough, we can inject them into human bodies, to cure disease or fight cancer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn1gmcs-HXU

      I’m particularly interested in how swarms communicate with each other, to co-ordinate their actions, like these beese who attack large predators: https://youtu.be/K6m40W1s0Wc?t=46s
      This is the type of behaviour that could allow swarms of small robots to fight disease in your body.

      An other cool point about swarms, is that because they are inspired from biology, they can be used to better understand what is happening in the natural world, by testing your theory on the robots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmyTJSYw77g&t=3s

      I wanted to share this video because it’s cool 🙂
      http://www.reuters.com/video/2013/06/05/fetching-and-carrying-robots-swarm-neare?videoId=243157941

      There are many many applications, my favourite is searching as it could be used to search for things on other planets. A swarm of mars rovers can search mars much faster than one mars rover can 🙂

      But i can also be used to search for people who might be lost after a disaster.

      If you want to know anymore just ask me 🙂

      Hope this answers you question
      Siobhan

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