Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SwarmOS Demonstrated at Idea Festival

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the welcoming-various-overlords dept.

PacoCheezdom writes "Intelligent Life has short summary of a demonstration by MIT professor James McLurkin of his new group-minded robots, which run an operating system called 'Swarm OS'. The robots are able to work together as a group not by communicating with all members of the group at once, but by talking only to their neighbors, and model other similar behaviors performed by bees and ants. "

13 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. My experience by 2.7182 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I worked in robotics for 3 years and there was a big fad of cooperative robotics. Now, closely related is this swarm stuff. But theoretically it is the same as having a robot with many parts (i.e. higher dimensional phase space). I never saw any real applications.

    1. Re:My experience by CaseCrash · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One word: Collectors.

      I've always thought robot swarms would be good for stuff like landfill reclamation. Teach it to recognize something you want picked up and then set them loose. Tell each other when they've found something or when they need help moving it, etc.

      Might not be worth the ROI though.

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
    2. Re:My experience by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Land Mines.

      I believe that's even been discussed here on /. before

    3. Re:My experience by Torvaun · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I seem to recall worry about declining bee populations and what that will do to the environment at large. Would these sorts of swarms eventually be able to replace bees for pollination purposes?

      --
      I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
    4. Re:My experience by JoeD · · Score: 2, Interesting


      No real applications?

      Forget about land mines, or rescue operations or other such high-minded things. Not that they aren't worthwhile, but they don't speak to most peoples' everyday life.

      How about self-driving cars?

      It seems tailor-made for that one.

  2. Boids by Joaz+Banbeck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Boids was a program written to try to simulate the flocking behavior of birds. It was written by Craig Reynolds

    Reynolds gave his boids 3 rules:

    1 Don't crowd too close to other boids
    2 Try to go the same direction as other boids near you
    3 Try to be in the average position of your local neighbors.

    With just those three simple rules, the boids arranged themselves in a flock. Much to Reynolds surprise, without any more rules than that, the flock exhibited other emergent behavior, such as a flock that split up to go around an obstacle would rejoin.

    More at: http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

    1. Re:Boids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      This is a little multiagent java applet I worked up a few years ago, inspired by stuff like Boids.

      http://www.erik-rasmussen.com/multiagent/

      For what it's worth...

    2. Re:Boids by m0nstr42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One of the seminal analytic papers in this area is

      Tamás Vicsek, András Czirók, Eshel Ben-Jacob, and Inon Cohen ``Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 75 1226 (1995)

      Another great paper:

      Couzin, I.D., Krause, J., James, R., Ruxton, G.D. & Franks, N.R. (2002) Collective memory and spatial sorting in animal groups Journal of Theoretical Biology 218, 1-11.

      In the above, a phenomenon called "collective memory" was exhibited in a model similar to Reynolds'. Individual members of the group have no explicit memory, but the group as a whole exhibits behavior that differs depending on the previous state of the group - in effect a "group memory".

      Also, a shameless plug for my own software/API designed for similar simulations: glSwarm. Admittedly in a very early state of development, but functional enough to play with.

      --
      m0nstr42.blogspot.com
  3. Practical application: self-laying mines by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Practical application: self-laying mines. Think how annoying it would be to clear a path and then overnight see the 95% of the mines you missed on day one redeployed in near-randomness across your path back.

    (Yes I have MOD points today...it's just more fun to talk.)

  4. This topic isn't new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Michael Crichton wrote about this in "Prey" in 2002:

    http://www.amazon.com/Prey-Michael-Crichton/dp/0066214122/ref=sr_1_13/104-4197432-5312718?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190057918&sr=8-13

  5. Swarm racer by Cochonou · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Swarming and flocking behavior also inspired a freeware game called Swarm Racer, in which you get to control a swarm of micro-racing robots. For Windows and Mac OS X.

  6. Re:wha? by lb746 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Cars driving themselves.

  7. Re:wha? by ChrisA90278 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    practical applicationS: Airplans flying and not crashing into one another. Same for cars.

    More practical. How about Earthmoving equipment or coal mining.

    Some exotic ideas. Military robots that gather intelligence. You
    drop thousands of these on the enemy's side and they look out to see what is going on and report back via "the grape vine". There would be tens of tousands of communications paths, far to many to jam. They also watch out for each other and communicate warnings like "hide, someone is coming." Sensor could be very primitive, perhaps just a microphone or a cellphone-like camera, but by working together they can use triangulation to locate moving targets.

    They don't have to be robots. What about a self configuring network? Each node only sees a few other nodes but they all talk about what they've seen and the word gets around that there is a printer on the second floor available for anyone who is a member of the graphic arts department to use.