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Collective construction in nature is
diverse and plentiful: from families
of beavers damming up water using
twigs and mud, to hundreds of
sociable weaver birds precariously
knitting stiff grass to form large
nests in trees. On a smaller scale,
hundreds to millions of insects work
together to build huge living quarters
using wax, mud, cellulose and
faeces. These
wondrous examples
have a surprising unifying feature:
complete lack of centralised control.
Individuals coordinate by leveraging
embodiment in a shared physical
world. Not only can they store
and pass information through the
environment; they also continuously
modify it to suit their own capabilities,
however
limited. This
strategy is
inherently decentralised, scales with
colony size, and allows many to work
efficiently on the same structure at
once. Correspondingly, these natural
builders have inspired the design of
autonomous robot collectives that,
despite being made up of simple
and inexpensive individuals, can
reliably create a wide range of novel
structures in unprecedented settings.
COLLECTIVE EMBODIED
INTELLIGENCE AND
DISTRIBUTED CONTROL
STRATEGIES
Collective intelligence occurs when
complex behavioural patterns emerge
from local interactions between
many ...
