Researchers at Georgia Tech in Atlanta say they have found a way to get multiple robots to work more closely together by developing what they call “minimally invasive” safety algorithms. These allow robots to move within inches of each other or other objects.

(Read "I, Cobot: Standardizing Safety in Collaborative Robots.")

Magnus Egerstedt, Georgia Tech.“We’ve shrunk the size of each robot’s bubble to make it as small as possible,” says Magnus Egerstedt, director of Georgia Tech’s Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines. “Our system allows the robots to make the minimum amount of changes to their original behaviors in order to accomplish the task and not smack into each other.”

A video shows two demonstrations of the minimally invasive controller at work in a lab. Sets of four, then eight, robots approach each other, meet, and circle within inches of each other before dispersing. A presentation on Georgia Tech’s safe swarm robots will be featured at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in December.