IR SIGNALS HELP HUGE ROBOT 'SWARM' LOCALIZE, FORM COMPLEX SHAPES

摘要

Staying true to the prefix "kilo," Harvard's Self-Organizing Systems Research Group upped the swarm ante by building a thousand of their "Kilobots"-well, 1024 to be exact. First introduced in 2011, the Kilobots are small and cheap, move around by vibrating their legs, and communicate with their fellow robots using infrared (IR) transmitters and receivers. The researchers are now working to develop specific algorithms so that the massive number of Kilobots can self-assemble into complex shapes.