We're cheap, we travel in gangs, and we're coming
From multiple sources, including the June 14, 2004 issue of FORTUNE magazine:

On the frontier of artificial intelligence, mobs of cheap robots collaborate like ants in a colony or bees in a hive....

"Imagine if you could convince a bunch of robots to act like ants, and further convince them that they really like land mines," observes James McLurkin....

He is a senior lead research scientist at iRobot....the company is best known for making the Roomba floor-vacuuming robots. But iRobot also does contract research and development like McLurkin's Software for Distributed Robots project, which is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Military brainstormers think that scores or hundreds or even a few thousand cheap robots working in concert may play an important role in future operations such as land-mine disposal or taking over buildings held by bad guys....

Insects make great conceptual models for cheap robots because they have simple local interactions with one another that nonetheless add up to very complicated group behaviors....iRobot's SwarmBots are cubes measuring five inches on each side. They have rechargeable nicad batteries and a pair of electric motors inside, along with a microprocessor and some associated circuitry. A "bump skirt" helps the robots sense and avoid crashing into obstacles. Each has a small color camera for simple object recognition, as well as sensors that detect light. Communications between robots are handled by an array of infrared transmitters and receivers....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where Are They Now at laradio.com laradio.com includes an excellent "Where Are They Now?" section. Here are some excerpts: Baka Boyz: KPWR, 1993-99; KKBT, 1999-2000. Eric and Nick Vidal moved to Miami in early 2003. Blade, Richard: KNAC; KROQ, 1982-2000. Richard left KROQ in April 2000 and moved to St. Thomas Island to teach scuba diving. He returned to the Southland in 2003. Burton, Michael: KROQ, 1990-95. Michael "the maintenance man" left the Kevin & Bean morning show in the fall of 1995 and filed a wrongful-termination suit charging the station with racial and religious discrimination. The suite was settled in late 1996 with both parties prohibited from revealing financial details. Furillo, Bud: KABC, 1973-75; KIIS, 1975-79; KABC, 1979-87; KFOX, 1988-90. Bud is working at KPSI-Palm Springs. Jackson, Michael : KHJ, 1963-65; KNX, 1965; KABC, 1966-98; KRLA, 1999-2000; KLAC, 2001-02. Michael left KLAC in late 2002 following a format change from Talk to Adult S...
Read more
Random Braveman...Random Contest Discoveries With all the hits that he's been getting, it's obvious that Mitzzee and I are not the only ones who have discovered Daily Dancer . Blogpulse and other sources list the following references to Daily Dancer: jrnev.blogspot.com/2005/06/i-might-do-this.html aprilshah.blogspot.com/2005/06/so-much-stuff-so-little-time.html bamapachyderm.com/archives/2005/06/01/omglollmaowtf/ andrightlyso.com/archives/2005/06/01/daily-dancer/ badhairblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/this-is-what-watching-clive-owen.html mickey.ondragonswing.com/archives/006310.html www.tabulas.com/~lainie/877653.html dailydancer.com/plesk-stat/webstat/usage_200506.html showdown.contagiousmedia.org/ The post from Lainie is especially illuminating: Daily Dancer. A computer geek who posts up videos of himself dancing to a different song everyday. This is part of the Contagious Media Showdown awards. Since he needs to get as many visitors per day as possible, I doubt he's reall...
Read more