Georgia Institute of Technology researchers created an army of robots controllable by swiping your tablet.

A tablet interface represents the floorspace, within which the small, hockey puck-like robots navigate. When the screen is touched, the location glows and a corresponding light appears on the floor. The robots will automatically divide themselves evenly and occupy each light accordingly. Users can simply touch their finger on the tablet, and the fleet of robots will follow to the corresponding point on the floor.

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To control the robots, you just tap where the beam appears. The robots follow the beam as they communicate with each other and figure out how to best cover that specific area. If you need them to move, you can swipe your finger across the tablet to move the light: the robots move to that new location. If you use two fingers in different locations on the tablet, the robots split up and cover both areas.

The revelatory part of the technology isn't so much the simplified instruction delivery method – finger and tablet – but the programming that allows a swarm of robots to respond en masse to generalized instructions.

"It's not possible for a person to control a thousand or a million robots by individually programming each one where to go. Instead, the operator controls an area that needs to be explored. Then the robots work together to determine the best ways to accomplish the job,” says Georgia Tech professor Magnus Egerstedt.

Egerstedt says the technology could be used to send hundreds of small robots into disaster areas to explore dangerous or hard-to-navigate confines, searching for injured victims.

The details of this amazing new technology was published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

TagsYou Can Now Control An Army of Robot Using Your Finger, army of robot, Tablet, Georgia Institute of Technology, swiping tablet to control robot, Robotics, robot technology