Bobbots is a small robot that is able to do the task as a group

Researchers from Georgia Tech have conducted experiments designed to show the simplest robots can still complete the task. The team created a group of robots they call Bobbots, which stands for “behaving, organizing, buzzing.” Robots are made using cylindrical chassis with a vibrating brush below and loss of magnets on the edges. Magnets cause them to spend more time on location with more neighbors.

The right computer simulation adds an experimental platform as a way to learn aspects of uncomfortable systems to study in the lab. The researchers said that regardless of the simplicity of Bobbot, they found that when the robot moved and crashed into other concise aggregate forms that were able to clean the debris collectively too heavy to move.

One researcher on the project, Daniel Goldman, said that most researchers built robots that were increasingly complex and expensive to ensure coordination. The purpose of his team is to see what complex tasks can be solved with a very simple robot. The researchers about this project were inspired by the theoretical model of the particle that moved above the chessboard. Theoretical abstraction is known as a particle system that organizes itself and is used to study the mathematical model strictly from small robots.

Researchers prove that theoretical models experience changes in phase magnetic interaction increases using ideas from probability theory, statistical physics, and stochastic algorithms. The researchers found Bobbots suddenly changed from spread to combining large and concise groups, similar to phase changes seen in everyday items such as water and ice.

In the end, the strict analysis used by researchers allowed them to show how to build Bobbot and reveal resilience inherent in their algorithm which allowed some robots to become wrong or unpredictable. Some funds for the work of the researchers were given by the Department of Defense.