autoevolution 15 May 2021, 13:40 UTC ·
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You can try to create a team with only the best of the best, but, if there’s no coordination, the results are not going to be good. Efficient team work is what it’s all about. And the same goes for robots. 1 photo
It starts off with one cute robot that’s delivering your packages and, soon enough, we won’t be surprised to see teams of robots and drones performing various tasks that help the community. Of course, scientists are already a few steps ahead of that, working on how to improve communication within robot teams and make sure that they get the best results in the most effective way.
Credits: Image: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT
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Sometimes, one robot isn’t enough.
Consider a search-and-rescue mission to find a hiker lost in the woods. Rescuers might want to deploy a squad of wheeled robots to roam the forest, perhaps with the aid of drones scouring the scene from above. The benefits of a robot team are clear. But orchestrating that team is no simple matter. How to ensure the robots aren’t duplicating each other’s efforts or wasting energy on a convoluted search trajectory?
MIT researchers have designed an algorithm to ensure the fruitful cooperation of information-gathering robot teams. Their approach relies on balancing a tradeoff between data collected and energy expended which eliminates the chance that a robot might execute a wasteful maneuver to gain just a smidgeon of information. The researchers say this assurance is vital for robot teams’ success in complex, unpredictable environments. “Our method