It is a technological advance to facilitate the mass-production of micro-robots, which can then be employed as a “real” swarm consisting of more than 100 micro-robot clients. These clients will all be equipped with limited, so-called pre-rational on-board intelligence. The swarm will consist of a huge number of heterogeneous robots, differing in the type of sensors, manipulators and computational power. Such a robot swarm is expected to accomplish a variety of applications and to perform different strategies. With the realisation of three bio-inspired basic scenarios, the swarm will be able to perform dispersion, aggregation and collective perception.
Building on a large expertise in micro-robot technologies, the project addresses topics like polymer actuators, collective perception, utilise (instead of fighting) micro scaling effects, artificial and collective intelligence. The project results enable humans to furtherly understand the micro-world, to bridge the gap between micro- and nano-technologies and to be the stepping stone to a “real artificial ant”.
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