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Xerox PARC Working On Modular Robots

Posted by Hemos on from the build-with-construtix dept.

An reader writes "I was watching Discovery Channel Canada last night, and they had a story about modular robotics that is being researched at Xerox PARC. Rather than build a single, large robot, project leader Mark Yim is working on small, autonomous bots that can work together to achieve a desired goal. When many of this bots are linked together, they call the result a polybot. "

1 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. More correctly called swarm robotics by DoubleTake · · Score: 5, Informative

    This research project is repackaged swarm robotics. Swarm robots have been around for years. The main problem with swarms is getting the power and leverage to manipulate large objects as the swarm is only as strong as it's weakest link. The main benefit is that they tend to be more fault tolerant than monolithic robots.

    See:
    Robotics portal
    Swarm robotics google search
    CMU Robotics Institute