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Robot Swarm Shifts Heavy Objects
holy_calamity writes "A swarm of robots has been demonstrated that can get together to transport an object too heavy for a single bot. Each robot is loaded with the same simple set of behaviors but more complex intelligence emerges from a group interacting. Two videos show the robots in action, and using a more complex behavior necessary when they're set to short sighted mode and can't see the target location from the starting point."
Actually, I think they ran off with the server. I can get the second video, but not the one of them "in action."
The robots can adjust their caterpillar tracks, to ensure they are all pulling in the right direction. "Each robot has a traction sensor inside that detects all the external forces on it," explains Dorigo. A robot uses its sensor to identify any conflicting forces, and then changes direction accordingly.
So, once its carrying your cargo along the path and begins to slide down a slope all the tracks will turn in unison to help carry it down the hill to its doom. They won't think anything is wrong because everyone will be pulling in the same direction.
Apart from this minor detail i think w00t!
liqbase
A 5 oz bird cannot carry a 1 lb cocoanut.
I for one welcome our new army of robot-swarm overlords.
A swarm of /. surfers "shifted" that in-story video link (and I'm assuming its server) into oblivion!
stuff |
A swarm of /. users has been demonstrated that can get together to transport a web server into the afterlife...
Because robots are strong. And they're made of metal.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
i have a gut feeling this story has been written in a way that takes simple developments out of context. The day i worry about robots getting too smart is when the saying about monkeys in front of typewriters writing epics at a ratio of 1000 monkeys for a year = 1 literary epic (or something like that) is reduced to one robot w/ the ability to compose one literary epic in one minute. Then we have something to talk/worry about..............
Res Ipsa Loquitor "The facts speak for themselves"
Why does it look like this video was taken through a hole in a box? It's just sort of weird...
But can they impersonate a T-Rex and mystify John Locke?
Where were you when the voynix came?
They are so cute!!!!!!!
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Borg v0.1
So THAT'S how they built the pyramids!
I left my wallet in El Sigundo!
The Invincible by Lem describes a planet populated by a swarm of self-replicating robots, that are very small and simple individually, but as a group display extremely complex behaviours, have swarm memory.
/. know enough about this practice that they should be able to explain this to a robot. And then we are all set. (did I mention that the swarm of these robots killed off everything else on the planet? But it will make the highways go faster.)
So all we need to do is to show these robots how to self-replicate, I am sure most people on
You can't handle the truth.
The object was apparently to demonstrate something or other regarding cooperation strategies between robots with limited communication abilities and limited knowledge of the surroundings.
What, precisely, was gained by doing this with actual physical robots, rather than a computer simulation?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Anyway, these sound similar, except for the fact that there was always something a little fishy about that "programmable matter" site...
Crow T. Trollbot
I'd love to see Sun implement this as an extention to their Project Blackbox. Now you can not only have a datacentre anywhere you like, but you can also move it about a little after the crane has gone ;-)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those things. Oh wait...
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
All these Japanese companies are dead set on the whole humanoid robot concept. While the AI systems are clearly a joke, why focus so much energy on bipedal movement? It is clearly not the easiest mode of transportation. Human walking is essentially controlled falling. Oh great a bunch of things that kind of resemble humans can lift something heavy all together. Why not just build a smart forklift to do the same job autonomously. It just doesn't make any sense.
I can get the second video, but not the one of them "in action."
Well, your office is clearly blocking material that's NSFW.
This guy's the limit!
Cool. Natural selection will play a larger and larger role in robotics and R&D. Now that computers are of sufficient power to crunch large enough numbers, people are starting to use them for some pretty cool thing (like designing fission reactors as mentioned in TFA)
I'm having trouble finding it, but there is an article that discusses the design of spacecraft antennae: Using natural selection to refine the shape to maximize efficiency. The thing that is cool about TFA is that these dudes use natural selection for behavioral modification.
I can't wait to see what they'll say when people ask them to solve political issues!
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
...and we need a way to destroy them, just clone a swarm of mini-"Ah-nulds" to travel back into the past to bite the ankles of the inventor of the robot-swarm!
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
"Sort of nanotechnology on a macro scale."
Wouldn't that just be, uh, technology?
Given their servers are already hosed I think they need some robots to hold the bandwidth load.
So would it be legal to upload a copy of these videos to YouTube or Google Video in order to take the load off the NewScientist server, and make the content accessible?
You'd have to assume it's copyrighted content (since everything is copyrighted unless otherwise stated), and therefore not allowed. But how is a cached copy of a video on Google Video any different than a cached copy of a web page on Google Cache or MirrorDot? The purpose would be the same.
I did get a copy of one of the videos before the servers went kaput that I could upload to a cache if it's allowed.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Watch the power of thousands of /.ers! Individually, they can't crash a web server, but together - with limited communication and intelligence - they can...
This post is displayed with recycled electrons
They are just too annoying to program that it's probably easier to build a robot especially when dealing with unideal situations. An ultrasonic sensor can have so many different modes of failure (ie Specular reflection. Sheets. Cross Talk. Etc. Etc. Etc.) that it's better just to use an actual robot.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
There have been a few previous efforts in this direction. Somebody, I think at UCLA, did some nice work in this area around 1990. They had a pair of small forklift-type machines which worked together to lift larger objects. One would get on each end of a couch, for example, and with very limited intercommunication but good force sensing, they'd move the couch together.
That seemed a very practical idea, but it wasn't followed up at the time. There are many industrial and construction applications where two coordinated machines of moderate size could do a job that would otherwise require a much bigger machine.
Here come the replicators!! Someone get Samantha Carter.
Looking at the video, try to spot the project management behavior that shows up towards the end once four of the bots figure out how to drag the object over. One of them just stops doing anything and stands out away from the group as if trying to think of ways to empower the resources to realize their action items.
It is this bot that must be destroyed before the future of robotics is harmed.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Reminds me of the robotic spiders in Minority Report that cooperated in searching. I thought it was a very cool scene.
This comment may be stupid, but it is not offtopic and there's no "-1, Stupid" mod (unless you count "Overrated")
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
aren't those called "Legos"? :)
Video server is ./'ed lookes like they need a "swarm" of servers in a beowulf cluster to handle this load.
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
I bet if those robots got together, they could write a better article than the author.
short-sighted and near-sighted are two different things.
... by a Swarm of Green Robots.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Slashdot user submits a story for uber First Post.
Slashdot Editor posts the story to add some inane dept line.
Millions of drones slashdot the website.
I don't even think that's consider artificial intellegence.
Slashdot intellegence maybe?
"Stimulus reponse! Stimulus reponse! Don't you ever think?!"
Have you read my journal today?
Heh, the video clip looked like worker ants trying to work together to move the object.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Oh come on, I can't be the only one who thought of Pikmin when they saw that video. Anyone?
Quite a gripping novel. A bunch of nanotech robots becoming self-aware and being rather nasty.
s /fr/prey.htm
See: http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/mysteryreview
Good to see this being implemented already, but scary!!
Couldn't stand the weather
I've never seen a video more in need of circus music.
If you'd check the research of C. R. Kube (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~kube/research.html>). Why this is getting any press now is ridiculous.
I think that nature is a wonderful place from which researchers can gain inspiration. But when you stop and think about it robots and swarm intelligence just doesn't work. Robots are have different properties then insects and as a result, insect behavior doesn't transfer well to robots.
It's all about energy. Both insects and robots have to be designed to optimize the amount of work done with their limited energy source. There are three basic tasks that consume energy.
- thinking
- communication
- acting (ie, moving)
Insects:
Thinking is the most expensive task for an insect. Brains are expensive. They use a lot of energy and require a physical body to support the increased energy usage. As a result, insects don't think - they act. There actions are hard coded so as to minimize cost.
Communication is difficult for insects to implement. Pheromones are relatively inexpensive, but impose serious limitations. Visual communication is possible (look at bees) but isn't used much. It also requires good eyesight and a neural network to decipher the images (both of which consume energy.) Audio communication is also possible but requires significant resources (ie, a brain) in order to be effective. In real life it is only used for the most basic forms of communication (look at crickets.) What I'm basically saying is that communication is expensive - as a result, insects found ways to work with minimal communication.
Acting requires energy, but it is the most efficient of the three tasks. If you take into consideration that insects already require a body to acquire food and reproduce, the added cost of using that body to perform an action is minimal. Acting requires no additional parts, it only consumes a small additional amount of energy.
Robots
Acting is the most expensive task for a robot. To act, a robot requires a body. This adds weight, motors, complexity. Batteries suck, have a limited lifespan and are difficult to recharge. Nothing reduces an actor's lifespan quicker then acting. While new technology can improve the lifespan, it won't improve fast enough.
Communication is expensive for a robot, but much cheaper then acting. Wireless communication allows for sophisticated communication between robots while using only a minimal amount of energy. New technology will improve the efficiency of communication more then it will the efficiency of acting.
Thinking is cheap for a robot. New CPUs allow for complex programs while only consuming microamps.
So this is what you have: (hight energy usage to low energy usage)
insects - thinking, communicating, acting
robots - acting, communicating, thinking
They are the exact opposite. Does it really make sense to have robots mimic insects? It's crazy. A more efficient way for robots to perform a group task is to have them cooperate explicitly. Elect a leader, create a plan of action, distribute that plan, then act together while minimizing the amount of energy required.
Willy
"a cubic foot in diamater"
??
please enlighten me
Don't let actual work accomplished sidetrack you from what's really important!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Slashdot story on the concept of weight distribution? This type of idiocy wasn't even posted on digg.
So where's the giant onion that makes these guys?
8==8 Bones 8==8
Some robots will be able to crawl along like Swarm-bots, others will be able to climb walls, and others still will be able to fly, he says.
Now if they can make about 99 of these things, equip only 10 of them with umbrellas, make some huge drops in the playing field, and make them look like Lemmings, that will be a story.
the link is dead
Theres a fantastic book my Michael Crichton titled 'Prey'. In that book also there is some company that creates a swarm of nanoparticles for carrying out programmable tasks. Only thing is it takes an ugly turn when these swarms become environment-aware and intelligent. I hope these idiots also don't create something dangerous in the name of science.
Although your reasoning isn't incorrect, it falls down because you postulate an either-or scenario.
Real engineering isn't like that: instead, real gadgets are always constrained by design budgets and top-end manpower, material properties, reliability, difficulty and cost of production, state of the art AI at the high end and available AI at the low end, and many other things.
As a result, no part of a real gadget is ever "best of breed", and the end product is always a tradeoff. And that's why engineers choose from among all the available technologies those which are most cost-effective, which doesn't mean cheapest but means those which offer the most functionality given all the real-world constraints.
Does swarming offer advantages in some situations? Yes, a lot of advantages, but with very clear limitations. Does managed cooperation? Of course, even more advantages, but with very high costs of all types, including robustness. So, engineers will always combine the two, regardless of your theoretical reasoning why that is not optimum.
In the real constraint-based world, combination *IS* optimum.
Could someone please explain why all the little robots appear to have glass bongs shooting out of their tops?
No, I will not work for your startup
Here's a suggestion: disable AutoCorrect in Word or OpenOffice. It actually make misspelling worse because it doesn't allow you the normal fault feedback.
You may have been writing it wrong for quite some time but Word may have corrected it (so you didn't realise you had it wrong). Kill off that feature and your spelink will improve.
Just my two cents..
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