Robot swarms use no computing to cooperate

The team, working in the Sheffield Centre for Robotics (SCentRo), in the University’s Faculty of Engineering, has programmed simple robots that are able to form a dense cluster without the need for complex computation, in a similar way to how a swarm of bees or a flock of birds is able to carry out tasks collectively.

The work, published in the International Journal of Robotics Research, is claimed to pave the way for robot ‘swarms’ to be used in, for example, the agricultural industry where precision farming methods could benefit from the use of large numbers of very simple and cheap robots.

A group of 40 robots has been programmed to perform the clustering task and the researchers have shown, using computer simulations, that this could be expanded to include thousands of robots.

Each robot uses one sensor that tells them whether or not they can detect another robot in front of them. Based on whether or not they can detect another robot, they will either rotate on the spot, or move around in a circle until they detect one.