Termites Teach Robots a Thing or Two

Termites Teach Robots a Thing or Two

ROBERT LEE HOTZ

Updated Feb. 13, 2014 7:17 p.m. ET

CHICAGO—Inspired by termites, Harvard University researchers have designed a construction crew of tiny robots able to build complicated structures without blueprints or outside intervention.

The robots, which took four years to design, are the latest innovation in what computer scientists and robotics researchers call swarm intelligence—a field in which scientists are exploring ways to enable large groups of simple robots or flying drones to collaborate.

“Every robot acts independently, but together they will end up building what you want,” saidteam leader Justin Werfel, a staff scientist in bio-inspired robotics at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University who helped demonstrate the robots Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

“One day, a system like this could build in settings where we could not easily build, like underwater or on Mars,” Dr. Werfel said.

The scientists programmed the robots using rules based on the behavior of termite colonies. Acting without human-style intelligence or a central plan, termite swarms comprising millions of insects routinely build mounds up to 42 feet tall. The insects act individually, taking cues from their surroundings and from each other.

In a similar way, the robot swarm can build towers, castles and pyramids out of foam bricks. Acting autonomously, individual robots can even build themselves staircases to reach the higher levels of the structures, adding bricks wherever they are needed, according to the researchers, who also published details of their project in Science.

Researchers from the Wyss Institute and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences collaborated on the work.

The robots are about 8 inches long and 4.5 inches wide. They have pinwheel-shaped tires to give them traction on the construction site and are powered by off-the-shelf motors. To sense its surroundings, each robot is equipped with an infrared sensor, an ultrasound sensor and an accelerometer. The robots were programmed with a few simple rubrics that allowed them to respond to changes in conditions around them and to each other. A computer program created these rules based on the design of the particular structure to be built.

Basically, the robots can sense the bricks they carry and the other robots nearby, said Harvard engineer Kirstin Petersen, who constructed them. They can move backward or forward, turn and move up or down a step. They can pick up, carry and deposit a simple brick. Despite their simplicity, the robots are smarter as a group than they are individually, able to complete relatively complicated projects, the scientists said. They usually can recognize mistakes they make and correct them.

Each robot “walks around the structure until it sees something that needs to be done and then does it,” said Dr. Werfel. “We are giving them enough feedback so that they can recognize errors and correct them.”