Watch a swarm of robots lay artificial pheromones like ants

The collective behaviors shown exhibited spatial organization, memory, and communication.
By Emmett Smith  on 
Robots used in stigmergy study
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Running, jumping, and flying: welcome to the future of robotics.


Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination, in which individuals can influence their peers by changing their environment. For example, some ant species lay pheromone trails to navigate between food sources and nests. Researchers used these robots to conduct a study to see if stigmergy-based behavior can be produced via automatic design. The results show collective behaviors designed automatically can be just as good, if not better than those produced manually.

Topics Robotics


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