ShapeBots: a swarm of shape-shifting

Each individual ShapeBot comes with small motors that allow it to drive around on a flat surface, as well as additional motors used to extend and retract its arms. The robots communicate with a host computer that tracks their positions using a camera, which continuously observes the swarm. The host computer choreographs the movements of the robots on a flat tabletop surface, directing them individually and as a team, both in their locomotion and arm movements

So far, the researchers have used the shape-shifting robots to complete simple practical and visualization tasks, such as cleaning up a desk or displaying the populations of states on a US map.



https://techxplore.com/news/2019-09-shapebots-swarm-shape-shifting-robots-visually.html

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