Self-organizing robot swarms

[xilman]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28739371 has a nice report on how a bunch of very simple robots, all running with exactly the same program and data, can self-organize into a required shape.

Not yet ufog but well on the way.

[Drashner1]

I saw an article about these in my local paper today. Neat stuff

Todd

[Rynn]

Long before ufog or any smart matter just having small robots that can work together will be a fantastic technology. A few years ago I saw a video on a university website (can't remember which one atm) which had modular robots working together to navigate obstacles. Despite only being a couple of inches wide they could cross long gaps by attaching together and creating a bridge. They could even climb stairs and other odd barriers. It was pretty cool

The not to distant future of robotics is looking promising. Two really cool developments I've seen recently are this "MacGyver" robot that is designed to use items from the environment to solve problems and Baxter, the next generation in industrial robots. The latter is really cool because not only can baxter do a range of jobs that previous machines couldn't do he can be shown how to do things by laymen! No need to get a programmer in to design a script for each task.