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A research team from the University of Nottingham is employing a large set of Miabot robots from Merlin Systems Corp.
Some twenty Miabots, known collectively as the ‘robot village’, have been fitted with ultra-sonic range finders and AVR-cam modules and are designed to provide a set of realistic mock-ups for typically human-driven decision-making problems such as search and rescue and disaster recovery. They run off a Bluetooth server to control the robots in real time.
The aim of the Robot Village is ‘potential field sharing’: having multiple agents construct and share their own potential fields while traversing an unknown environment through onboard sensors.
Future plans for the village include creating a mini-production environment or ‘shop floor’ with the intention of moving a product between the machines.
Dr Jon Garibaldi, one of the team leaders, said “Merlin and their Miabots were in mind from day one. We wanted a UK company, flexible to a bespoke design and able to design and provide extra sensors. We wanted a company interested in our research and wanted to build an ongoing relationship with them.”
To date, the research group has been highly successful in obtaining grant funding for its continuing work. In Dr Garibaldi’s words, “good research should lead to more questions”, and the future practical application for such research is tremendous.
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