Swarm Intelligence

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Swarm Intelligence
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Swarm Intelligence

• Bassett Inspiration Series

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Read Scientist gets Bugged

• Why would robot scientists study insects?
• Why would it be useful?
• Do you think the programs would be complicated?

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Han Wang M.Sc project

• Do you think the algorithm used here was simple
  or complicated?
• What do you think the algorithm for the ants
  might have been?
• Soif the algorithm was walk until you find
  food, then come back, what did the end result
  look like?

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Emergence

• A very simple instruction had a very
  different-looking result. This is called
  emergence.
• Read Emergence.

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Open a Word document. Head with name, date and
class color, with the heading Swarm
Intelligence.

• Question 1. Explain why swarm intelligence could
  be useful to roboticists.

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Read this

• Warehouse robots get smarter with ant
  intelligence

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At Harvard, some scientists are looking at
brainless Bristlebots, and they see something
that looks as though they are cooperating.
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MIT is working on something a little more
intelligent

• Small Cubes that self-assemble
• Look at the article.
• Question 2 Write down three interesting things
  that you learned from these two videos.

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Even smaller (though not as small as they will be)

• Programmable self-assembly in a thousand-robot
  swarm

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Swarmbots pulling a Child

• What signal did the swarmbots send? What do you
  think the algorithm could have been?

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Swarmbots Pulling a heavy Object

• What signal did the swarmbots send?
• What do you think the algorithm could have been?

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James McLurkin at Rice University works on Swarm
robotics
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James McLurkin deploys his fleet
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Swarm Robotics
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Question 3

• Write down 3 behaviors these robot use.

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A different kind of swarm robot

• Nano Quadrotors with artificial swarm
  intelligence
• 11 Quadricopters doing something amazing

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• You notice that the second set of robots are
  doing different things from each other.
• Does this count as swarm computing?
• Question 4 How would you define Swarm
  Intelligence?
• If we defined it as simple programming makes it
  looks as though the swarm has intelligence,
  would that make them qualify? Is that an
  appropriate definition?

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• Swarm robots that use termite techniques to build.

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• Lets look at some Swarm Robots cooperating with
  an AR drone.
• Does our new definition of swarm robotics make
  this count as swarm robotics?
• As interesting as the communication is, it's the
  applications that really make this video worth
  watching. Since the ground robots can't see very
  far, they rely on the quadrotor to scout ahead
  and estimate the parameters of upcoming
  obstacles. Then, the quadrotor instructs the
  swarm on the ground how to team up to best
  overcome those obstacles. With the hill, for
  example, the quadrotor can use stereo imagery to
  compute how steep it is, run an onboard
  simulation to see how many ground robots will
  have to team up to make it over, and then give
  instruction and direction to the robots below.
  Very clever.

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Question 5

• Imagine one or two uses for this type of swarm
  robot. Give details.

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• Now we will watch
• Swarmanoid, the Movie

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Question 6

• Describe the swarm robots you saw in this movie.

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• Here is a summary of swarm robotics.
• Question 7
• List three of the suggestions for swarm robotics.

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Swarm robotics used in real life

• Read this article about robot boats.
• Watch the Robot Boats Rescue Mission.

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• A modular Flying Swarm
• Used to kill jellyfish!
• Another flying swarm - SMAVNET

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Yet another kind of swarm
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Question 8

• Write a PARAGRAPH giving reasons why you think
  there is, or is not, an exciting future for swarm
  robotics.