Army of bots swarms to create complex shapes

摘要

The world's largest robotic swarm has been created using an army of more than 1000 bots. By working together, they can autonomously form complex 2D shapes such as stars or letters of the alphabet. The system, developed by Mike Rubenstein of Harvard University and his colleagues, uses simple robots called Kilobots. Each one has an onboard microcontroller, infrared sensors and transmitters for communication, and vibration motors that allow them to move. They flash their lights to tell how far they are from nearby bots by measuring light intensity.