ROBOT OF THE WEEK: BRISTLEBOTS SWARM JUST LIKE THE BIRDS AND THE BEES
by Hazed
When you see a flock of starlings swarming across the sky in a coordinated movement, or a swarm of insects surging around all in unison, you think the movements must have some intelligence behind it. But it turns out that non-intelligent objects can swarm in just the same way.
Meet the bristlebot. A bristlebot is a tiny, simple robot made out of the severed head from a toothbrush, a motor from a pager and a watch battery, all taped together. That’s all: no computer, no brain, no sensors. The only thing a bristlebot does is vibrate, and with each vibration, it shifts about 10 micrometres. The way the bristles are oriented determines whether it will move in a generally forward direction, or spiral sideways.
An applied mathematician at Harvard University took a whole bunch of bristlebots and set them going in an arena, to see if they would form the kind of coordinated swarm we see in living creatures.
The result was that yes, they do - provided there are enough of the critters to take up at least 8% of the space in the arena, they gather into swarms along the edge. This demonstrates that swarming doesn’t require thought at all.
Giomi said, “The bristlebots are just bumping into each other and bumping on the edge of the area. They are able to sense their neighbourhood and environment, and because of this contact interaction, they are able to pass this information to one another. This is enough to establish some coordination.”
