……re-reading…..thinking…..Kilobots!  My bad!

But I am still finding all this robotic technology a bit unsettling….okay….I may be a bit paranoid…..but when is enough enough?  I may have an active imagination…….but so did Hitler……and look where that got us…..

But where did I get kill-bots?

And now, they’ll be manufactured and made available to everyone thanks to K-Team Corporation, a Swiss robotics manufacturer that has signed a deal with the robot’s inventors at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard announced on Monday.

Kilobots share the basic characteristics desirable in a collective-behavior robot, including on-board computers and the ability to sense and communicate with their fellow robots. The collective behavior is inspired by social animals, including ants and bees, according to Harvard.

These features enable Kilobots to perform the most common tasks assigned to robot swarms, such as the ability to find an object and deliver it to a home base. The operation is more complicated than it may seem because, in addition to avoiding collisions with each other, some robots in the swarm must decide to give up the hunt and assume the role of a beacon to guide the others home.

The main key to the kilobot’s low cost is that it operates on an entirely different principle of mobility than typical swarming robots. Rather than using wheels, it carries two tiny vibrating motors. The vibrations travel down stick-thin legs and enable the robot to move in any direction.

Kilobots also power up and down remotely and recharge themselves (they run on lithium-ion batteries) as needed.

Such swarms are already on the horizon, one example being a collective of ocean-exploring robots under development at the University of California-Davis through a National Science Foundation grant. NASA has also been working on a robotic swarm concept leading to the development of miniature robots that link with others to create larger devices that can reassemble themselves to match environmental conditions, perform tasks and even repair themselves.

With the steady increase in the use of military drones, it should be no surprise that the U.S. Army is in the game, with the development of more sophisticated platforms enabling soldiers to interact effectively with robot swarms.

Call me whatever you like but I am finding all this military application a bit hard to swallow….or maybe I should shy away from the SyFy channel for awhile…..whatcha think?