Word: robotical
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McLurkin, 32, has come a long way since that first machine. Now a graduate student in computer science at M.I.T., the young scientist is on the forefront of developing "swarmbots"--packs of dozens of small robots that communicate with one another and work in harmony to complete an assignment. They have no centralized command system and can cover vast terrain; if one is destroyed, others fill in. His 112 titanium robots resemble small car batteries on wheels. McLurkin is working with a team at iRobot, a private Boston-based robotics firm, to find practical uses for his fleet...
McLurkin's machines were inspired by nature. As an undergraduate at M.I.T., he became interested in ants and kept a terrarium full of them on his desk. The decentralized nature of ant colonies gave him a model for his robots. "I worked on the notion of using virtual pheromones [the biochemical scents that some animals use to communicate]," he says. "As one robot gathers knowledge, it spreads it to its neighbors, and they spread it to their neighbors." Despite his success, McLurkin still gets a high-schoolish kick out of playing with his robots. Attendees at an iRobot holiday party...
RESCUER BY REMOTE NEED HELP? SEND IN THE ROBOT...
Within 24 hours of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Robin Murphy was on the scene with a team of robots to help sort through the debris. It was the first real-world test of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue in Tampa, Fla., the only unit of its kind on the planet. Rescue workers at ground zero, accustomed to using trained dogs and cameras mounted on poles to look for survivors and human remains and test for structural weaknesses, soon saw the advantage of cyberhelpers. "Search cams typically penetrate only 18 ft., and the heat...
...fascinated with the brain--so he helped build one. The biophysics engineer and computer researcher led a team at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto, Japan, that spent five years constructing a humanoid equipped with artificial intelligence. Completed in 2001, the 6-ft. 2-in., 175-lb. robot was named Dynamic Brain, or DB for short. Says Kawato: "We built an artificial brain hoping that it'll help us understand the real one." DB doesn't have the friendly exterior of its cute entertainment-robot cousins. Its face is composed of just "eyes," made of two telescopic, wide...