Question: what is the most complex robot you work with or have? and what does it do? also those little epuk robots you said they work toghether but how and what do they do?????

James Stovold answered on 11 Mar 2013:

Hi ibrahim,

We have a number of different robots in the lab, ranging from the tiny ePucks and mini submarines to much larger flying robots and off-road robots. The most complex is probably one of the off-road robots, but it’s not something I do much work with — a large number of us who use the lab are focussing on how lots of simpler robots can do more than one complex robot. This is the idea of `swarm intelligence’ which is our name for how animals such as ants and bees can do so much when they work together, but they can only do very little on their own.

For example, if you take a look at http://youtu.be/CJOubyiITsE the video shows a swarm of simple robots (similar to the ePucks) that are trying to pull the child across the floor. Alone, they don’t have enough strength to do this, but as they ask for more help from other robots (all those with the same colour have been asked by one of the others with the same colour), they get to the point where they are strong enough between them to pull the child across the floor! This is how the robots can work together to do something that they wouldn’t be able to do on their own.

Hope that help!

James