Posted on 03/13/2008 10:25:10 AM PDT by BGHater
A £4.6 million project to create swarms of hundreds of autonomous, Transformer-style robots has been launched.
Scientists aim to create a prototype team of self-organising, shape-changing mini robots that work as a team by 2013.
The self-healing robots will be able to dock with each other, share energy and co-operate to maximise their abilities to achieve different tasks.
Researchers from 10 universities who are collaborating in the European Union-funded Symbrion programme say future applications include search and rescue missions, space exploration and medicine.
Prof Alan Winfield, of the University of the West of England, Bristol, said: "A swarm could be released into a collapsed building following an earthquake.
"They could form themselves into teams searching for survivors or to lift rubble off stranded people.
"Some robots might form a chain allowing rescue workers to communicate with survivors while others assemble themselves into a ‘medicine bot' to give first aid.
"The robots have functionality on their own, but they can also combine together or adapt and change as the situation requires.
"The individual robots won't change physically, but they will adapt and evolve their functionally."
Scientists involved in the Symbrion project will develop software that allows the individual robots – which will be around an inch square – to collaborate in order to use their different attributes to maximise their performance.
They will develop the principles that can be built into hardware and software to allow robots swarms to evolve, adapt and collaborate without human supervision according to the situations they face.
The initial prototype swarm will consist of several hundred individual autonomous units, each measuring around an inch square.
Prof Winfield denied the swarms could go wrong and cause harm to humans, but said scientists could not take responsibility for how societies decided to use them.
"It might sound like something scary from science fiction but it's not, it's just a complex engineering system.
"It will have to go through safety and validation assessments before it would be used in real-life situations.
"As scientists we behave ethically but we can't determine how these things might be used. That is a question for wider society to determine."
He added the first robot swarms would be ready for use in real-life situations between 10 and 15 years from now.
Prof Noel Sharkey, of Sheffield University, last month predicted autonomous military robots that will make decisions about when and who to kill will be in use within a decade.
And then one day the Cylons decided to kill their masters...
Good to know...I have an uneasy feeling that the Decepticons are about to invade.
Actually, you’re going to elect them :0(
Ah yes, the Decepticon, aka CINO.
Please tell me that there is no carnality involved in this "docking with each other" thing.
So, we actually created the Borg?
Dec 21st 2012?
Replicators>
Immediately thought of these verses with this article;
Rev 9:7 And the shapes of the locusts [were] like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads [were] as it were crowns like gold, and their faces [were] as the faces of men.
Rev 9:8 And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as [the teeth] of lions.
Rev 9:9 And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings [was] as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.
Rev 9:10 And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power [was] to hurt men five months.
Rev 9:11 And they had a king over them, [which is] the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue [is] Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath [his] name Apollyon.
Obviously, there will be military applications...
[Door opens]
"Sarah Khannor?"
...
Resistance is futile.
Borg hive mind bump.
“Swarms” of transformers. I love it.
I think that means that they don't have to mate to reproduce. ;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.