Book 15, Question 125
Why Do Swarms of Tiny Robots Work Together Like Ants?
Swarms of tiny robots work together like ants because each one follows a few simple rules! Each robot senses only its neighbors. Together, they can do big jobs, like searching a large area.
More fun facts
- In 2014, a team at Harvard University got 1,024 tiny robots called Kilobots to work as one big group.
- Each Kilobot is just a few centimeters across and stands on three thin legs like pins.
- A Kilobot moves by shaking two small vibrating motors, which make it slide across a flat table.
- Each robot can only talk to a few close neighbors using invisible infrared light, so none of them can see the whole group.
- By following simple rules, the robots slowly lined up to make shapes such as a star and the letter K.
- If a robot got lost or a traffic jam formed, nearby robots noticed and helped fix the mistake.
- Before the Kilobots, only a few robot swarms had ever had more than 100 robots.
Sources: Harvard University
Questions kids ask
Why use many simple robots instead of one fancy robot?
Simple robots cost less to build, and together they can do jobs that none of them could do alone.