Robots to build future houses
They are as industrious as Bob the Builder and possess the same social intelligence as a colony of termites.
A crew of self-organising robots created by US scientists can construct towers, castles and pyramids without any supervision or detailed instructions.
It is hoped the study of the co-operative bots is a small step towards a time when autonomous robots could build real structures on Earth and even on other planets.
Each Termes bots are given an overall idea what the finished job should look like before being left to get on with it, researchers said.
All that guides them are signals from infrared and ultrasound sensors and simple 'traffic' rules that determine whether to go or stop.
They also know when to lift a building brick and where to attach it, as well as how to avoid collisions and even how to reach higher levels by constructing staircases.
While the robots are just over 6-inches long and the building bricks are made of lightweight foam, the scientists are impressed by what their creations are capable of.
"The key inspiration we took from termites is the idea that you can do something really complicated as a group, without a supervisor and secondly that you can do it without everybody discussing explicitly what's going on, but just by modifying the environment," said US computer scientist Prof Radhika Nagpal, from Harvard University.
“If they [robots] built carelessly, it would be easy for them to build in a way where they got stuck," said team member Dr Justin Werfel, from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Cambridge, US.
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