Taipei makers had created swarm robots : I missed this earlier, and I quote from their website:

In this project, we design and make 438 flower robots for the 2010 Taipei International Flora Expo. Our goal is to make each individual equip identical minimum rules but achieve highly intelligent behaviors. Hence, we adopt the idea of “Self-Organization” to realize “Swarm Intelligence”. Each “Florabot" has a MCU, IR transceivers, a tri-color LED, a motor and a stretch structure. The IR transceiver on top of the flower is capable of sensing the presence of a visitor. Once the visitor is detected, according to how close the visitor is, the tri-color LED in the head changes color and the stretch structure of the head modifies its size. Moreover, this Florabot propagates the information of visitor’s presence to neighbors by IR transceivers at the base. The neighbors will further react based on the received information.

Website: http://www.tonytang2009.com/wordpress/florabot/

#science #scienceeveryday #robots