I went along to the Robotics Intelligence Laboratory at Newport’s University to see researchers there working on the creation of a colony of mini-robots able to communicate with each other so they can perform tasks both individually and as and a group.
It was amazing stuff. The team, led by Torbjorn Dahl currently have eight mini-robots and soon hope to increase this to 30, making it the biggest collection of mini-robots in the UK. Torbjorn and his team are programming the mini robots – which one the researchers described as being “the size of muffins” - to exist together as a self-regulating society.
The aim is to get the robots to simulate the behaviour of ants in a colony so that they become a self-organising community that functions without top-down control. They will have built-in behavioural patterns that enable them to not only do tasks set them but also realise what else needs to be done, as worker ants do. Each robot learns how to work in a way that improves the group by filling the roles of others as well as the role they are assigned to do. It’s all amazing stuff that could impact upon the organisation of towns, villages and cities, as well as improving automation in manufacturing. Check out the video I made whilst there…
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