Video: Drone Swarm Assembles Itself, Terrifies Humanity

For those of you counting down to the robot uprising, you may be interested in the latest news from engineers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. They've created autonomous robots that randomly dock with each other.

The little hexagonal modules that make up the flying drone are completely self-sufficient. In the context of a robot army, that means the airborne robot could be indestructible. Because the magnetically connected ‘bots easily break away from each other, they could blow apart under attack, and then reassemble themselves on the ground, good as new.

gizmodo.com...

Imagine a future where combat drone modules swarm through the air and assemble into drones before and during combat. If hit, the damaged components of the drones are sluffed off, to be replaced by neighboring modules. . A swarm attack.

We are seeing the beginnings of this technology. . Wow!

[edit on 6/8/2010 by clay2 baraka]

Interesting little video. Although it seems we're more like e.g. 60 years, from achieving the robotic-monsters you thinking about; as AI advances, it will speed up the Design & Development process.
Once the basic software developments are in place, and enough money is thrown at it, I doubt they'll be many limits to how far computers could develop either war machines (or more just more efficient-better software!).

reply to post by Liberal1984


You know what they say: that black budget technology in places like Area 51 is at least 50 years ahead of what we see in the "white" world. . I guess that gives us ten years to go before SkyNet unleashes its fury.

[edit on 6/8/2010 by clay2 baraka]

Perhaps the 50 round AK mags aren't such a bad idea after all, look at all the GD* targets we're gonna have!
PULL!!

I never knew I was having prophetic nightmares....

I read something similar about micro-UAVs designed to go inside of tunnels with some people considering strapping small anti-personnel explosives to them.

I'd rather not be running from a swarm of kamikaze robots....

kind of reminds me of the bat-bomb, though....

reply to post by clay2 baraka


I think that would be a great Christmas gift idea.


Boys and our toys.

if anybody understood how helicopters work, and how certain things are necessary to achieve flight (counter rotation, collective pitch etc...). It's alot more complicated than you think to achieve any kind of meaningful stability and agility based on models based on current science.

I fly Rc helicopters regularly and pretty much anything that is small and light tends to get blown around everywhere easily with the wind and with no control on top of way too easy to occur unrecoverable crashes, And then on top of that think of HOW the drones are going to be powered, even the most powerful lipo batteries that are used today can only power these small hovering objects at 10 minutes tops. And you can forget about gas, freaking loud and the endurance time is still negligible.

and you guys are expect these drones to act like anime objects? Lol not going to happen.

It will flop badly, unless you can bypass that with alien technology (reactionless propulsion/gravitational field) you'd be wasting money on toys that accomplish nothing.






[edit on 11-6-2010 by redrezo]

wait till they put the fastest mcro computers that
react in fractions of a nano second
there will be no stability isues

10 yeras ago they announced a chip that did a page
where what we have in public now does a byte
quad that chip...

oh yeah
they say they are 40 years ahead of the public

Originally posted by Danbones
wait till they put the fastest mcro computers that
react in fractions of a nano second
there will be no stability isues

you have no understanding of the physics involved, they already HAVE integrated circuit chips that can do that, but it's still useless without the ability to move outside in outdoor wind ON TOP of low battery endurance.