Swarmanoid Robots cooperate to fulfill tasks (Source IEEE Spectrum)

Swarmanoid Robot Teams Up with Itself to Steal Your Books – IEEE Spectrum.

“The Swarmanoid swarm consists of three discrete types of robots, all of which we’ve been introduced to before: Foot-Bots can grab onto other robots and move horizontally. Hand-Bots have manipulators and a freakin’ sweet magnetic grappling hook that lets them move vertically. And Eye-Bots can fly, perch on ceilings, and direct the movements of the Hand-Bots and Foot-Bots with their cameras.

“While trying to manage so many robots all at once may seem needlessly complicated, a swarm of robots has all kinds of advantages: swarms are adaptable, scalable, resilient, cost-effective, and very efficient at any task that involves being in more than one place at once, like search and rescue (or search and steal). There are downsides, too, like having to recharge each and every one of these little guys, but with some epic amounts of cleverness by robotics researchers, robot swarms are getting to the point where they’re able to pretty much take care of themselves, and after that, the sky’s the limit.”  — [Quote from IEEE Spectrum Automaton]

The video shows how the robots in the swarm interact and intelligently carry out the task to get a book from the shelf and transport it away.

The interesting applications for such swarms of robots might be around help in catastrophe scenarios, search and rescue missions and explorations of dangerous territory.

The next time you are missing a book and cannot find it in its place you will know who the culprit was . . .

Related articles

• Swarmanoid Robot Teams Up with Itself to Steal your Books (spectrum.ieee.org)
• Meet Swarmanoid, a cuddly gang of robots who use grappling hooks to rob you [Video](io9.com)
• Swarmanoids rule (i-programmer.info)
• Swarmanoid robots work together … to steal books (gizmag.com)
• AI’s Emmy award goes to Swarmanoid robot book heist (physorg.com)
• Fukushima Robot Operator Writes Tell-All Blog (spectrum.ieee.org)
• A Robot to Rescue Trapped Miners  (spectrum.ieee.org)
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