Intelligent Small World Autonomous Robots for micro-manipulation

I-Swarm is a new project launched by FET, the Unit dealing with Future and Emerging Technologies and acting as the pathfinder of IST by exploring new science and technology frontiers.,

The I-Swarm project aims at technological advances to facilitate the mass-production of micro robots, which can then be employed as a "real" swarm consisting of up to 1,000 robot clients. These clients will all be equipped with limited, pre-rational on-board intelligence. The swarm will consist of a huge number of heterogeneous robots, differing in the type of sensors, manipulators and computational power. Such a robot swarm is expected to perform a variety of applications, including micro assembly, biological, medical or cleaning tasks. The project will address topics like polymer actuators, collective perception, using (instead of fighting) micro scaling effects, artificial and collective intelligence. The expected outcome of the project will enable humans to further understand the micro-world, bridge the gap between micro and nano technologies and be the stepping-stone to a real artificial ant.
In classical micro robotics, highly integrated and specialised robots have been developed in the past years which are able to perform micro manipulations controlled by a central high-level control system. On the other hand, technology is still far away from the first "artificial ant" which would integrate all capabilities of these simple, yet highly efficient swarm building insects. That is why I-Swarm will take a leap forward in robotics research by combining experts in both fields, micro robotics and distributed multi agent systems.I-Swarm is co-ordinated by the Universitat Karlsruhe. The participants of I-Swarm are coming from a wide variety of interest groups providing a broad understanding of the expected outcomes. Participants are: Universitat Stuttgart, National Technical University of Athens, EPFL Lausanne,Karl-Franzens-Universitat Graz, Universitad de Barcelona, Uppsala Universitet, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Forderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. Sheffield Hallam University, Scuola Superiore de Sant'Anna, Pisa.
Project Information in brief,Project Type: Integrated Project,Duration: 48 months,EC Project Funding: 4.40 million euro,For more information: http://microrobotics.ira.uka.de,Contact Person: Joerg Seyfried, E-mail: [e-mail]

Countries

Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom