A big army of small robotic fleas

Probably one of the most futuristic branches of modern hi-tech are cyber gadgets that imitate form and assignment similar to human's organs or the human's body overall. Or maybe not only human's but animal's or insect's bodies. Anyway the issue is to create a robot. Why to copy a human or an animal? – because natural incarnation is the ultimate one. One of those institutions struggling to fill a common form with piece of technology is I-SWARM project. I-SWARM project is founded by EU and receives to some serious sponsor's support – all to develop a small army of robotic fleas. Their number is supposed to be at most finitely many as a thousand and what's more, they must have a collective artificial intelligence.

I-SWARM project has already made some progress and now researchers are way closer to make a collective artificial intelligence, than anyone has ever been before. A big colony of small robots is almost ready in their laboratories. Actually, there is more than one type of working robots. Different types models appeared on different stages of work and were aimed to test one part or another. All the form factor variations and technical solutions have made a robotic gadget that is four times smaller than a thumbnail. Inside it has: the main element is a tiny solar cell. Solar power here is both – advantage and disadvantage. Of course, solar panel provides robotic insect with infinite charge on the sun, but if sun rays won't reach flea's back, then it will stop because it has no battery. A model with batteries was considered too big and needed a number of wheels to move. Without wheels robot can move with the help of vibration. And that's it – no wheels mean small size and less weight. Also every one in the swarm is equipped with an infrared port to exchange information with each other, and a processor of course. The "brains" of a robotic lice is an intricate thing, so is its operating system, which fits tight in eight kilobytes of memory and just two kilobytes of RAM.

So what does collective artificial intelligence imply and what are the objectives of the gadget. First of all every single task the swarm gets, has to be performed jointly. Robots interact with each other via infrared port until everyone in the working group has been informed about what actions will be performed or what problems are faced. A usual task for robots is to move some object from one place to another or to follow an intricate path with different obstacles. As a plan for future I-SWARM robot developers speak about dividing the army into groups and giving each group a specified task on the shared problem so the colony will have a sort of complex skill.

Researchers say about their concept robots that they are as far from entering our everyday lives as we are far from moving to the Mars. But the probable usage fields are very wide. Working in zones dangerous for people is only one on the endless list.