Bugs

Bugs are general purpose robotic platforms designed for experimentation with ideas of swarm intelligence. They are physically embodied autonomous agents interacting as an artificial life system. Each robot is programmed with simple rules such as "seek light" and "avoid obstacles". Through their interaction with each other and the environment these simple low level behaviors give rise to interesting higher level patterns of organization.
This video is a studio demo. It shows a test of 5 agents exploring flocking behavior at 3x speed.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• art
• robot
• autonomous
• bugs
• emergence
• heather
• dewey-hagborg

[hdeweyh]

New York City at the moment.

[rjaduthie]

What would be nice is if the bugs changed their luminosity dependent on how close they were to a partner - or that if more than two were together thy'd pair off and become dim in union.

I assume there is a light source off camera - the bugs seem to be attracted to something else near the start of the motion. Or is this a stochastic movement added to randomise things?

[hdeweyh]

That is an interesting idea.

There is no light source off-camera, the room is completely dark except for the lights on each bot, and yes, they begin with a random walk

[rjaduthie]

Thank you very much... it is a fascinating subject, and probably could talk for a long time with you on it - though maybe one day... where are you based?