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If the agility of a Spot or Atlas robot is something to behold, a special merit is reserved for tiny, simple robots that do not function as a versatile individual but as an adaptable group. These "tribots" are built on the model of the ants and, like them, can work together to overcome the obstacles related to the team work.
Developed by the EPFL and the University of Osaka, the tribotons are tiny, light and simple. They move more like worms slowly than ants, but are able to launch if necessary. The robots themselves and the system that they make up are modeled on ants jaw traps, which alternate between crawling and jumping, and work (like most other ants) in fluid roles such as explorer. , worker and leader. Each robot is not very intelligent in itself, but it is controlled as a collective that deploys its capabilities in an intelligent way.
In this case, we can expect a team of tribots to move from one end of a complex terrain to another. An explorer could advance, detect obstacles and relay their location and dimensions to the rest of the team. The leader can then assign units of workers to the head to try to push the obstacles. If that does not work, an explorer can try to jump on it – and if successful, he can relay his telemetry to others so that they can do the same thing.
Fly, tribot, fly!
Everything is done slowly enough at this point – you will notice that in the video, a lot of the action is taking place at a speed of 16x. But speed is not the idea here; Similar to Squishy Robotics creations, it's more about scalability and simplicity of deployment.
The small robots weigh only 10 grams each and are easily manufactured in series, because they are actually PCBs containing a few mechanical jaws and points of attachment – "a quasi-two-dimensional metamaterial sandwich", according to the document. If they cost only one dollar each, you can drop tens or hundreds on a target area and over an hour or two they can characterize it, take action and look for hot spots of radiation or heat, etc.
If they moved a little faster, the same logic and a modified design could allow a set of robots to emerge in a kitchen or dining room to find and pick up crumbs or plates in place . (Ray Bradbury called them "electric mice" or something in "It's going to rain a soft rain," one of my favorite stories of him, I'm always looking for them.)
Swarm-based robots have the advantage of not failing catastrophically in case of a problem: when a robot breaks down, the collective persists and can be replaced as easily as a part.
"Since they can be manufactured and deployed in large numbers, having" losses "will not affect the success of the mission," noted the director general of EPFL. Jamie Paik, who co-designed the robots. "Thanks to their unique collective intelligence, our tiny robots can demonstrate greater adaptability to unknown environments. therefore, for some missions, they would outperform larger and more powerful robots. "
This actually raises the question of whether the sub-robots themselves are a kind of super robot? (This is more of a philosophical question, first raised in the case of the builders and the devastator.Transformers was ahead of its time in many ways.)
The robots are still in the form of prototypes, but represent a major advance over other "collective" robot systems. The team documents its progress in an article published in the journal Nature.
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