An ant faced with two paths to a food
source may not know which is best, but an ant colony can quickly sort
this out: Individuals leave trails of chemicals called pheromones to
mark the route from nest to food and back. As other ants follow,
pheromones build up more rapidly along the shortest route, reinforcing
the scent and guiding the colony en masse.
A honeybee colony similarly pools its resources to select a
home. Several hundred “scouts” head out to search, reporting back on
potential sites. Other scouts follow up, choosing sides until a quorum
has settled on a particular spot. This life-or-death decision draws on
the collective wisdom — or swarm intelligence — of the hive.
Inspired by examples like this, engineers are producing
ensembles of small, insect-like robots that cooperatively perform jobs
that might be difficult, dangerous or tedious for humans to carry out.
As in nature, these robotic systems tend to be decentralized, composed
of agents doing simple things that add up to communal achievements.
Although the current price tags per unit are generally in the triple
digits, developers hope one day to make the devices so inexpensive that
some robots could be lost or damaged without jeopardizing the entire
mission.
“In the end we always go back to nature to see what
insects do,” says University of Washington engineer and robo-centipede
designer Karl Böhringer. “They can do amazing things, and we want to be
able to do them too.”
source: discovermagazine
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