For a few weeks now, robots inside Georgia Institute of Technology’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines have been whizzing, flying and lumbering about, beyond the control of their creators.
This is all going according to plan because the Robotarium is a 725-square foot enclosure where robots roam at the whim of anyone from around the world who has the time and know-how to code some commands for this swarm of bots.
The mission of the Robotarium, says Georgia Tech, is to "democratize robotics by providing remote access to a state-of-the-art multi-robot research facility".
Coding kids, teens or adults can download a Matlab or Python simulator, write their own script, sign up for a Robotarium account, and upload their code for execution.
Some examples of what you can do with this robot swarm include Rendezvous, a script that commands the bots to, well, rendezvous at a certain position within the Robotarium. Formation Control is a script to code these bots to meet in a certain shape, like birds or fighter jets in flight. There are several videos on the website showing how cool it looks as the little bots find each other and work out how to position themselves.
https://www.robotarium.gatech.edu/
