Researchers at the IRIDIA laboratory at the Brussels School of Engineering, Université Libre de Bruxelles, have shown that robots are able to collectively decide in what order they should complete their tasks.

The researchers based their work on swarm robotics, a branch of robotics that draws from the collective and organized behavior of social animals (such as ants) in order to create groups of robots that exhibit artificial intelligence.

Robots are currently able to communicate and coordinate to make decisions and carry out simple tasks, such as moving an object or picking one of two paths. For their latest research, Mauro Birattari and Lorenzo Garattoni created a swarm of robots able to perform a sequence of three actions, without knowing the correct order in advance.

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In practice, the robots were required to move to three different points in space, where they were to perform a simple task. Only after the tasks were completed would the robots learn whether the order was correct.

In order to solve the problem, some of the robots gradually form a chain between the three points in space. The others use as a guide as they test the various possible combinations by following instructions from the robots who make up the chain. Eventually, they determine the correct sequence by working together.

The research team says that the study demonstrates that robots are able to collectively determine a sequence of actions whose required order was previously unknown. This ability to plan ahead is considered to be a complex cognitive skill, and it emerges from the interactions between the individuals in the group. Together, the robots are able to plan a sequence of actions, which no individual in the group would be able to do alone.

This research paves the way for a number of potential applications involving robots that can solve problems on their own. The possibilities that the researchers anticipate include searching for survivors after a natural disaster, exploring unknown or hostile environments, building structures on dangerous sites and various applications in agriculture.

In 2016, researchers at North Carolina State University developed a combination of software and hardware to allow the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and insect cyborgs, or biobots, to map large, unfamiliar areas — such as collapsed buildings after a disaster.

“The idea would be to release a swarm of sensor-equipped biobots — such as remotely controlled cockroaches — into a collapsed building or other dangerous, unmapped area,” said Edgar Lobaton, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.