An algorithm & an army of robots

19/08/2014| Robotics An algorithm & an army of robots It looks incredible, if not a little unnerving. An army of a thousand robots, propelled by tiny motors, forming their collective body into recognisable shapes. The self-organizing swarm of "Kilobots" - simple three-legged structures with bodies measuring only a few centimetres across - is the work of a team at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and represents a major milestone in the development of collective artificial intelligence. The researchers sought to replicate the behaviour displayed by birds, ant colonies and cell organisms. The project has just been published in the most recent edition of the Science journal. So how does it work? The "kilobots" follow rules incorporated into an algorithm which instructs them to build a specific shape, with four of the robots acting as the base of the pattern to be followed. The robots use primitive edge following and tracking behaviour to communicate with each other and move into positions which gradually form the desired shape, such as a starfish or the letter K. Individually these "kilobots" exhibit only a fraction of the intelligence of humanoid robots; yet collectively what they produce is staggering. This is the first time that such a huge number of entities have been programmed in this way using an algorithm. "We are especially inspired by systems where individuals can self-assemble together to solve problems", said Radhika Nagpal, Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at SEAS. "The beauty of biological systems is that they are elegantly simple - and yet, in large numbers, accomplish the seemingly impossible. At some point you no longer even see the individuals; you just see the collective as an entity to itself."