omoc writes:
"Inspired by the termites' resilience and collective intelligence, a team of computer scientists and engineers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created an autonomous robotic construction crew. The system needs no supervisor, no eye in the sky, and no communication: just simple robots—any number of robots—that cooperate by modifying their environment.
The TERMES robots can build towers, castles, and pyramids out of foam bricks, autonomously building themselves staircases to reach the higher levels and adding bricks wherever they are needed. In the future, similar robots could lay sandbags in advance of a flood, or perform simple construction tasks on Mars."
[Ed. Note] Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-02-self-organizing-robot s-robotic-crew-foreman.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2014, @07:51AM
(Score: 1) by chromas on Saturday February 15 2014, @08:12AM
(Score: 1) by Gaaark on Saturday February 15 2014, @10:11AM
This Sig for sale... beer IS an acceptable currency (bitBeer?).
(Score: 1) by AudioGuy on Saturday February 15 2014, @05:18PM
Now that there are a number of commercial building construction systems that use foam blocks, even the foam blocks limitation is not a barrier to actual usability for these robots.
I want one.