Harvard’s $14 Swarm-bot Design

Robotics Science Technology
Harvard’s  Swarm-bot Design
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If you’re interested in studying real-world robot swarms, the unit cost is everything. Reportedly, most commercial swarm bots cost $100 or more, so this innovative design from Michael Rubenstein, Nicholas Hoff, and Radhika Nagpal of the Harvard’s Self Organizing Systems Research Group represents an order-of-magnitude savings over existing platforms. They call it “Kilobot,” and besides low cost, it is designed for rapid assembly (<5 min/unit) and group charging using plates that engage the top and bottom of the entire swarm at once. From their technical report (PDF):

While these robots are low-cost, they still have abilities similar to other collective robots. These abilities include: differential drive locomotion, on-board computation power, neighbor-to-neighbor communication, and neighbor-toneighbor distance sensing. These abilities are achieved at low cost mainly through the use of vibration based locomotion and a simple range only sensor.

The embedded video shows swarms of up to 29 Kilobots (about $410 dollars altogether) engaged in “foraging” and “follow-the-leader” behaviors. The group plans to produce a 1024-bot swarm in the near future. [via Hack a Day]

12 thoughts on “Harvard’s $14 Swarm-bot Design

  1. Tyr Grisfal says:

    Did anyone else keep seeing “Killbot”?

  2. Seth Johanson says:

    How do I get one.

  3. Seth Johanson says:

    How do I get one.

  4. Ben Dixon says:

    Very cool, anyone got any more info re designs and where to obtain parts from?

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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