Swarm robots made safer and more reliable with automatic programming

Swarms of robots capable of communicating with each other to carry out complex tasks cooperatively are expected to become increasingly important in the future, in fields such as manufacturing and agriculture.

Autonomous cars will also need to be able to cooperate with one another, while observing their own rules of operation, in order to safely navigate the road network.

But glitches caused by human error during programming are a common feature of computing, with the global cost of debugging software estimated at around $312bn each year.

Researchers at Sheffield Robotics have now developed a technique that allows human users to input the task they would like the robots to carry out into a graphical tool, alongside details of what the robots are physically capable of doing.

The machine then automatically programmes these instructions, and translates them into a source code that can be used to control the robots, according to Dr Roderich Gross at Sheffield University, who led the EPSRC-funded research.