The Coming Swarm

Disturbing news is coming out of Belgium regarding a planned experiment to create robot "swarms," in which specialized robots work in tandem to perform complex tasks. (Wired Magazine: Swarmanoids) In this system, a group of robots is divided into specialized teams, each team programmed to perform a component of the desired task and communicate with the other teams about its progress. For example, one group of robots would be tasked with ground maneuvers, another with observation, and a third with grappling and climbing wallls. Oh, and "others will fly." The plan right now is to develop, in the next several years, a robot swarm capable of tidying a bedroom. Why we need a swarm of wall-grappling, flying, ground maneuvering robots to streamline the process of comforter rearrangement and dirty laundry collection was not made readily apparent. However, this shift in robot deployment tactics clearly represents an increase in the danger posed by robots. Make no mistake about it, these scientists are creating the framework for a massive robot army, complete with ground infantry, special forces units, and military intelligence.

More disturbingly, the study's designers compare the structure of the swarm to that of an ant colony. It is a salient point that this type of organization has worked out frighteningly well for ants, given the current estimate that approximately one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) ants currently inhabit the Earth. Put differently, there are about 167,000 ants for every human. Now imagine that those ants were robots, and imagine that they were all in your bedroom, plotting (in tandem) an escape from their tedious life of tidying.

Bang-up idea, University of Brussels.