Robotic “Bug” Swarms Could Save Lives

If you think bugs are icky, you better get over your feelings, because miniature swarms of their robotic likeness might help you out of a collapsed building in the near future.

An international team of researchers have created swarms of tiny flying robots – each no larger than a hand and weighing 30 grams – that could completely change the way disaster search and rescue missions are conducted.

The project – involving scientists from universities in the Netherlands and the UK – not only produced the tiny robots, but programmed each one with a “swarm bug algorithm”, that allows them to independently explore unknown areas and afterwards return to their deployment point.

Each drone is equipped with a camera and they “talk” to each other using their wireless communication chips. Their small size does mean limited computational and sensing power, which meant that scientists had to be innovative with their programming.

Guido de Croon, principal investigator of the project, elaborated on how the robots would navigate and be useful with rescue teams.

He said: “Bug algorithms do not make maps of the environment but deal with obstacles on the fly.”

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