Researchers Reference Flocking Birds to Improve Swarmbots

inghamb87 writes "Scientists have studied flocks of starlings and cracked the mystery behind the birds' ability to fly in large formations, and regroup quickly after attacks, without getting confused and ramming into each other. While the information is cool, some scientists seem to think that the best use of this knowledge is not to aid our appreciation of nature, but to make more effective robot swarms. We've talked about swarming robots many times before, but usually researchers look to insects for inspiration."

Odd to dismiss it so early

[StaticEngine]

Perhaps the OP could consider that not all robots are human killing machines, and this kind of swarming/flocking behavior could be applied to something like vehicular safety. I've often pondered the idea of lateral lines on fish, and how quickly a school of fish can become aware of the motions of surrounding fish and other obstacles, remaining in formation but moving as seemingly one unit. How great would it be if robotic cars could react thousands of times faster than a human, and in concert, to flow seamlessly around a tire blowout, or debris that fell off a truck onto the highway? Aren't these kinds of goals the very reason we do this kind of research, and isn't the application of this reserach to improve our quality of life the very thing that pushes mankind forward intellectually?

Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams

[TheRealMindChild]

This is old.... OLD news. It is a simple mob effect. See Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams [mit.edu]

The nature behind it is rather simple. Imagine you have a mob of angry rioters walking down the street. No one really has a plan, but the mob moves together. More or less, no one individually generally wants to break off by themselves and smash in a window and take a TV from the appliance store. It is perceived as a risk of sorts. Eventually though, someone will want to do something enough that their want levels start matching or exceeding their perceived risk of breaking off of the mob. The person who begins to break off will be at an equilibrium of sorts... if the mob keeps going and are going to leave this person behind, either their want levels have to have a bit of increase, or they join back into the mob, because they don't want to be singled out. The other scenario is parts of the mob will notice said person breaking off and their perception of risk goes down, where more of the mob will follow... then the more that follow, the more that end up following.

jumbo packet swarms in mesh networks

[G4from128k]

I would imagine that some clever network folk could use this research to develop interesting parallel-distributed network management algorithms. After all, a large data packet is not unlike flying bird that does not "want" to collide with other packets in large network (= transport medium = "air"). Assuming the coordination packets are much much smaller than the data packets, this scheme would cost-effectively prevent collisions and congestion by optimizing the spread of data both cross-sectionally and longitudinally in a network.

Re:Boids

[TheBrakShow]

Perhaps most relevant to this article is this particular simulation made last year which actually demonstrates flocking birds.

http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~paul/publications/boids/index.html [shef.ac.uk]

You can even play with the settings panel on the right side and set off "gunshots."

But yeah, this stuff is far from news.

Re:its undeniable and sad

[MightyYar]

get over it, most of the good roboticists are or will be part of some weapon industry.

Indeed, it's very hard to be part of an industry that doesn't at least indirectly help the military. Even an improvement in textile loom speed can produce cheaper uniforms. The military has a keen interest in everything from alternative fuels, to advances in materials science, to food preservatives. If you can think of an improvement for something, it is likely that it can (and will) be used in some way, however small, to kill people more efficiently.

As you say, get over it. :)