Bleeding Edge

Bleeding Edge

by Mike Masnick




What Are Swarm-Bots?

from the everybody-work-together-now dept

Roland Piquepaille writes "Swarm bots are a project funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies program of the European Community which focuses on the design and the implementation of self-organizing and self-assembling biologically-inspired robots. "A swarm-bot is an aggregate of s-bots (mobile robots able to self-assemble by connecting/disconnecting from each other) that can explore, navigate and transport heavy objects on rough terrains in situations in which a single s-bot would have major problems to achieve the task alone." In this column I wrote, you'll see pictures of a single s-bot and of a swarm-bot made of several assembled s-bots passing a fosse. Impressive! These researchers think that potential applications of swarm-bots include space or underwater exploration. "

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  1. Apr 21st, 2003 @ 4:52am

    Terrorist Swarms

    by dorpus

    Because of the physical phenomenon of resonance, soldiers marching in step cause the ground to shake. Soldiers traditionally break step when crossing bridges to avoid collapse. A crowd that rushes for an entrance at the same time can exert so much resonant force that the people in the front can get pancaked.

    If you have a bunch of swarming thumpers, could you make them thump on a structural vulnerability to make structures come down? Or manipulate a crowd to implode on itself like a crushed watermelon.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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