News: Robot team-mates tap into each others' talents

18:09 15 August 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Tom Simonite

Teams of robots that can remotely tap into each other's sensors and computers in order to perform tricky tasks have been developed by researchers in Sweden. The robots can, for example, negotiate their way past awkward obstacles by relaying different viewpoints to one another.

Robert Lundh, who developed the bots at Örebro University, says cooperative behaviour is normally rigidly pre-programmed into robots. "We wanted to have the robots plan for themselves how to draw on their capabilities and those of others," he told New Scientist.

Lundh's robots decide whether another nearby robot may be able to help with a specific task. In one experiment two round robots, each 45 centimetres in diameter and 25 cm tall, teamed up to negotiate their way through a doorway. They were forced to cooperate because each robot's vision system had been limited so that it could not see enough of the doorway to be certain of getting through without hitting the sides.

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