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Self-Assembling Robots Using Flying Drones

Posted by Unknown on from the air-support dept.

mikejuk writes with an excerpt from I Programmer on a neat swarm of robots that use flying drones to build a map of their environment: "How can a swarm of robots get a global picture of its environment? Easy it simply sends up a drone. We are used to thinking of drones as being used for surveillance by humans operating on the ground, but what is good for humans is good for robots too. The drone can view the overall terrain and run simulations of what configurations of robots could best traverse the slopes. Once it has worked out how to assemble the robots into a single machine the drone has to communicate the plan to the swarm using a protocol based on the colored lights they all have. The ground robots adopt a random color and the drone selects the one it wants to communicate with by displaying the same color. They then repeat the process until only one robot has been selected i.e the drone follows the color changes of the selected robot. Of course if you don't like the idea of human drones flying over your head you may not be happy about robots getting in on the act as well..." Original paper

8 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Rendezvous with Rama by TooTechy · · Score: 2

    It sounds like Arthur C Clarke's work ;-)

    Octo-spiders anyone?

  2. Amazing by tnyquist83 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So this is how it all begins... Although I did get a little chuckle when the first robot attempting the hill climb took a tumble, this is amazing and I can't wait to see this technology applied to the real world. The future really does seem to be an interesting place...

  3. Re:oblig by tnyquist83 · · Score: 2

    I, for one, welcome them.

  4. ending rocked by Nyder · · Score: 3, Insightful

    that's a great use of tech, get it to push a big load of junk food to us on the couch. =)

    --
    Be seeing you...
  5. In Soviet Skynet.. by luckymutt · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...ah, never mind.

  6. I for one by BenSchuarmer · · Score: 3

    welcome our new refreshment fetching overlords

  7. Re:Light communication ok.. but not exactly effici by SomePgmr · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is to determine which one is positioned where.

    Wifi doesn't help with that. Even GPS doesn't help here because we're talking about very small relative distances. But the challenge and commands might well happen over wifi, bluetooth, or as is popular in these kinds of things, point to multipoint with xbee modules.

  8. Re:Self assembling? by unix_core · · Score: 2

    In soviet russia, IKEA furniture assemble.