Swarm intelligence refers to a part of exploration calculations applicable for various commercial, engineering, and industrial fields for its wide range of uses. Further, the approach is easy to implement with the ability to reach absolute optimum. One example of it is the newly developed BCO (Bee Colony Optimization) algorithm is one of the most efficient swarm intelligence-based algorithms.
Now bringing forth a new advancement in the market, researchers have recently found that swarms of tiny vibrating robots might have the ability to carry out complex actions like squeezing through tunnels and transporting objects. The study would be a great contribution to the Swarm Intelligence Market as it demonstrates that a swarm of particles restricted to a flexible scaffold could be a promising system for making deformable and mobile superstructures. The delicate structures could perform tasks that are considered challenging for monolithic robots as they can go through narrow spaces, even ones smaller than their size, and move around hurdles as well.
The team states that their interest laid towards movements of tiny objects through vibration, present in a closed setting. For instance, the Electric Football Game, wherein players move around a metal table that is made to look like a football field whenever vibrations are used from below. In the present work, researchers made use of small, plastic, insect-like objects embedded with a device that made them vibrate instead of a vibrating base. Thereafter, they created numerous courses for the bugs to travel through by changing walls’ positioning. At last, they added the bugs and analyzed what would happen.
After undertaking a number of trials, the team made out patterns in their random movements. For instance, whenever they collided, they would cluster along the sides of the barrier. Once the cluster is formed, they behave like one entity, i.e., all of them working together to move forward through the maze. When the landscape was changed, the team discovered that they could make the cluster do small tasks like carrying an object from start to end.
In addition, they also found that in case a cluster encountered a narrow pathway, it would still be able to pass through by making itself accordingly thin. Also, the clusters had the ability to merge force to pull objects from the surface and bring it onto the formed structure.
The team also conducted their experiment in another scenario where they outfitted the bugs with light-activating vibrating motors that helped them with a little control over their direction. They discovered that flashing lights made bugs turn left and right. Moreover, through the study, the team found that the bugs interesting things like playing billiards. The study as a whole is an amazing feat and could become the laying foundation for other great studies that would lead to great developments in Swarm Intelligence Market.