Morphogenesis: Shaping Swarms of Intelligent Robots

An introduction to swarm intelligence, swarm robotics and morphogenesis. This video won the Best Video award at the AAAI-07 conference Vancouver Canada. The scientific research was performed by Anders Lyhne Christsensen, Rehan O'Grady and Marco Dorigo. The video was directed by Andreia Onofre.

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People & Blogs

Tags:

• Robots
• swarm
• intelligence
• robotics
• ants
• AI
• morphogenesis
• control
• university
• conference
• AAAI

[metabog]

They probably won't become self aware and decide to kill everything at all!

[CertainAsTheSun]

Thanks for putting this video up. I tried to access the video on your website, but it was difficult to download or play the video there. I'm a student and I'm going to share this with my Bio class :]

[speedproductions797]

morphogenesis is the key!

[absher786]

@michalchik

Moreover, I'd also like to point to the fact that Data Mining is a kind of technology in Computing whereas we try to solve the same kinds of problems. I guess, the "Rules" for the Intelligence of a Swarm could be determined using this technology, if we devise a way to capture these natural swarm behaviours and represent them as Data against a period of time.

[absher786]

@michalchik

Michael, I read yours Houshalter's comments and found the conversation very interesting. For some points, I'd agree with you, while agree with Houshalter for the other ideas.

Basically, if programmers have been designing individual algos based on individual cases, then there is no doubt that all their effort is baseless. To devise the rules by which it works, it is essential for every researcher to look at as many scenarios as possible.

[Houshalter]

Ants might be complex, actually they are, but theres a limit. There are only a few thousand neurons in their brain, much less than even other insects. They have been to focus of research because they are consistent, easy to observe, and do often seem to follow a few, albiet complex, set of rules. Look at it this way; their behaviour is more complex than say a plant or a dust mite, but far less complex than a large vertabrate, like a fish or human.

[Houshalter]

@michalchik, look, im not saying ant behaviour isn't complex. I used to stare at them all the time and watch them run around. They're very complex, and often inefficient at actually searching for food and then getting other ants to come look for it to. I got a fly swatter out and swated a bunch of flys that were bothering me. I gave the ones i got to the ants. You wouldn't believe how visous these little guys are to dead and dying flies. They carried dozens of them down in seconds.

[Houshalter]

@michalchik, That would be cool to have an "antometer", but no, im not a researcher, and these simulations are really just for observing any kind of emergent and evolving behaviours. So far no ones created a successful "antbot" although a few good programmers came close. The simulatoin actually works against ants because its essentially a discreet flat plane. The only complexity in the enviroment comes from interaction with other organisms, just like a real ecosystem.

[michalchik]

There are very good reasons why we have computers and robots that play chess well or work on assembly lines, but we don't have robots that do tasks that average humans can do such as build roads, drive trucks, demolish houses, etc... Chess and factory floors are minimal environments that are highly regular and predictable. In the real world things are not. Anything human or ant without huge repertoire of complex behaviors gets stepped on.

[michalchik]

It may look antlike to a casual observer the same way a a wax figure may look human to a casual observer, but that is only because you look at both in a controlled simplified environment in a casual way. Ant's cope with widely fluctuating temperatures, soil chemistry, poisonous plants, individual and colony predators, contagious diseases, uneven and collapsing terrain, photodegradation of pheromones, wind, mechanical trail disruption, irregular size food, food the fights back and on (continued)