Question: How do the e-puk robots work? i am very interested!

James Stovold answered on 8 Mar 2013:

Hi Page77,

The e-Puck robots have two wheels underneath, and have various ports on the top and bottom for extending them, depending on what we want to do. This could include fitting cameras or other sensors to allow them to communicate in different ways, or even something like a grabber arm so that they could pick something (or each other) up. The robots are then controlled by a very small computer chip sitting just under the green plate, which tells the robot how to move or communicate.

While the individual robots are actually fairly simple to control, they can’t really do a huge amount on their own (much like the individual nerve cells in the brain); if they communicate with each other, however, they can work together to solve a problem (such as picking up a heavy object). The main aim for these kinds of robots is actually to *not* tell each robot how to pick up the heavy object as a team, but to get them to decide between themselves how to solve the problem.

If you want to see a video of this kind of behaviour, have a look at http://youtu.be/CJOubyiITsE — in this video, some similar robots (with grabber arms) try to pull a child across the floor, but can’t manage it alone, so they ask other robots to help them.

Hope that helps!

James