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Complexity Digest 2000.05 - 02
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31-Jan-2000

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Swarms of Robots Solve	Complex Problems, Business Week Online
 









Agent based modeling is an increasingly popular way of solving a
number of complex problems in different fields. Swarms of simulated agents
follow their local rules and interact with each others while searching for a
solution to a computational problems. Dedicated software environments like the
Swarm allow the user to use high level tools and libraries to set up the
simulations.
While all of these activities are happening in CyberSpace and the agents
are made of software only, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New
Mexico have implemented some of these artificial life ideas into hardware: the
agents are actually little robots that autonomously navigate in difficult but
real terrains and cooperate to solve real problems of military and civilian
applications. Among them are clearing of mine fields and other operations in
dangerous environments or for instance the search for victims of avalanche
accidents (Business week asks: "But Will They Bring A Little Keg Of Brandy?").
The autonomy and communication among the robots would indicate a major step
forward in robotics applications that in the past depended on remote operators
that basically had to individually radio-control each robot. The next
generation robot would be smart enough to make for example many navigational
decisions only based on information about the goal, the current location
(determined by global positioning systems), the observed environment and
perhaps input from other robots in the swarm.




"But Will They Bring A Little Keg Of Brandy?"
, Business Week/ February
7, 2000 p. 103

Sandia Swarm Project


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