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Swarm Intelligence

The idea of robots is not new, and mention of them goes back to at least classical Greek times. In Homer’s Iliad, for example, a Greek god named Hephaestus created armor for the hero Achilles. Later, around 1495, Leonardo Da Vinci created specifications for a robot that could wave its arms, sit up, and move its jaw and head. Still, use of robots has become widespread only recently. Among the more interesting types of robots we use today is one called the swarm robot. This type of robot was inspired by colonies of insects (like bees or ants), and is distinct from other types, in that the robots act together. Because of it, these robots are said to use what’s called “swarm intelligence,” wherein the individuals behave together as one superorganism. In much the same way birds will flock in a single group and ants will work collectively, these robots are employed to work together to complete one major task. The U.S. military, for example, was recently working with the idea of swarm intelligence to control unmanned vehicles. More interesting, two researchers have argued that nanobot swarms can possibly be used in the human body to destroy cancer tumors. For the more mundane tasks of life, swarm robots can be useful for things like dispersing to find something hidden, to spy, or to clean. The benefit to this type of robot is that even if several of these robots fail or malfunction, the rest can still complete the task.

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