ACEIZE Tracking the current state of Science and Technology

This is a partial summary of the state of the art circa 2007. This article is a a starting point into researching robotic swarms, aka self-organizing robotics, aka ad-hoc robotic networks. Two links were the impetus for this article:

The first is about Smart Dust, consisting of swarms of robotic 'fleas'.
The second is an ant colony simulation algorithm that has been created on Second Life

Project Summaries

• Smart Dust: At UC Berkely Kristofer Pister and Sarah Bergbreiter are working with swarms of millimeter scale pieces of silicon that they hope will be useful for military and emergency sensing and monitoring. The project uses many robots measuring 7-11 millimeters in length. Essentially a microchip with legs, Smart Dust could conceivably be manufactured for about a buck a piece.
• Swarm-Bots: A European project that creates robots which autonomously form larger systems.
• Second Life Ant Model: Creates an ant simulation based on a hormone model with basic rules of behavior. There are several different sets of rules employed by the ants - which set of rules is determined by several behavior states. In the video, he mentions gathering, and recruiting among others.
• MIT research. The abstract I have read concentrates on the algorithm used in positioning the robots for optimum sensing. They claim that the algorithm involves neighbor position, however, there is no mention in the linked article about how the position of neighbors is known to each robot in the system

Financing Organizations

• Future and Emerging Technologies (European Community)
• Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society
• MIT Distributed Computing Lab

Important Terms

• Terms Describing The Idea
• Multi-Robot Systems (multirobot systems)
• Autonomous Robots
• Autonomous Self Assembly
• Modular-Robot Systems
• Ad-Hoc Networks
• Distributed Robotics
• Mobile Sensing Networks
• Networked Robots
• robot clusters, robotic clusters, cluster robotics
• Theories Behind the Idea
• Swarm Intelligence
• Evolutionary Computation
• Biological Simulation
• Digital Hormone Model
• Distributed Coverage Control
• Miscellany
• Motes: a propriety definition of a module in a robot system - intended to mean small bots that cluster
• Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS)
• Sensory functions
• Continuous scalar field - a scalar value (real number) can be attached to every point in space. In the case of physical forces the space is defined on Euclidean space (the shit can be graphed, yo). Examples are light intensity, temperature, sound intensity, chemical concentration, magnetic fields
• Voronoi regions: Space is divided into cells defined mathematically by points in that space. Each point defines a cell. The area of the cell is determined by the distance between each point and it's adjacent point. Note: it immediately makes sense once you see a picture.
• Gaussian sensory function: Gaussian functions are the normal distribution of statistics - used in computer vision and smoothing algorithms.

Types of Communication between Bots

• Swarm Bots (s-bots) use red and blue LED's and a camera. The article makes it appear as though the robots are picking up the color of the LED's as communication between the bots. Blue means not connected and red means connected. Although there are 8 colored LED's in each s-bot, presumably different colors, with messages assigned to each color are employed.
• With Smart Dust each 'mote' is outfitted with a transceiver and sensors. The Smart Dust gathers information through it's sensors and passes it along from bot to bot until the information reaches a central computer.
• Digital Hormone Control is used by the Second Life Ant simulation

Mobility

• Swarm Bots use sets of tracks
• Smart Dust uses more of a spring loaded flagellation to propel them in the air, or more of a crawling movement. The spring an adaptation by Bergbreiter (more of a rubber band) powers a MEMS motor.

Power Schemes

• Smart Dust uses solar power. The power scheme was developed by Seth Hollar Question: how are the bots going to explore inside earthquake wreckage?

Links

• Smart Dust from UC Berkley
• Robotic Fleas
• Abstract of why Hormone Model of multi-robot interaction. Called the Digital Hormone Model.
• A project from the distributed robotics lab of MIT
• E. O. Wilson & Biological Simulation
• Ant Simulation
• Swarm Bots