The world's cheapest robots capable of forming swarms were unveiled
today.

Alexis Johnson (left) and Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner (right) look at their
swarming robots
Inspired by bees, ants and other social creatures, the 50p sized
robots made their debut at the Eleventh International Conference on
Artificial Life in Winchester and mark a breakthrough in "swarm
robotics".

The 'bots, which could cost as little as £15 each if at least one
thousand are made, were described by Mr Alexis Johnson and Dr Klaus-
Peter Zauner of the University of Southampton's School of Electronics
and Computer Science.

Swarm robots are used for basic research on "emergent behaviour", the
way that individual creatures cooperate, for instance to form flocks
of birds, swarms of insects or shoals or fish.

Long-term possible applications of massed ranks of swarm robots are in
monitoring pollution spills, said Dr Zauner. "Armed with sensors, they
can map out a danger zone if a barrel of pollutants in a storage area
has leaked, and move if it continues to spread," he said.

The swarms could be used on motorways, to quickly close off a lane if
there is an accident, each displaying a bright warning sign to warn
traffic. They are so cheap that many more can roll into place fill the
gaps if any are crushed by a car, trodden on or simply fail.

And he said that they could help explore other worlds, where a swarm
of cheap robots is much more robust and reliable than one expensive
all purpose robot. And they could be used to create vast arrays of
solar panels in space.

A small swarm 25 prototype robots capable of running for more than two
hours between charges and with sufficient processing power -
equivalent to an old Sinclair ZX81 - to run complex computer programs
has already been developed by Dr Zauner and Johnson along with Stephen
English, Jeffrey Gough, Robert Spanton and Joanna Sun.

advertisementThe team employed motors normally used to vibrate mobile
phones to drive two little rubber wheels on each robot.

These motors can be attached to circuit boards by a standard
manufacturing process - removing the need for hand assembly of the
robots and bringing the cost of a swarm of robots within reach of a
vast range of applications.

'This is truly exciting: now we can order robots from the same UK
companies that regularly make circuit boards for our projects - for
them it is just a circuit board they can mass-produce like any other,
but actually it is a completely functional robot.' said Dr Zauner.

'This also poses important research questions: how can we maintain and
control thousands of robots,' he added. 'The students have made first
steps to answer this using software tricks inspired by the way
bacteria exchange code for drug resistance.'

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Revelation 9

3And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given
power like that of scorpions of the earth. 4They were told not to
harm
the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people
who
did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5They were not given
power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the
agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it
strikes a man. 6During those days men will seek death, but will not
find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

 7The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads
they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled
human faces. 8Their hair was like women's hair, and their teeth were
like lions' teeth. 9They had breastplates like breastplates of iron,
and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses
and chariots rushing into battle. 10They had tails and stings like
scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for
five months.