Design of the “army-ant” cooperative lifting robot

This paper describes the design and development of a new class of mobile robot. These small robots are intended to be simple and inexpensive, and will all be physically identical, thus constituting a homogeneous team of robots. They derive their usefulness from their group actions, performing physical tasks and making cooperative decisions as a coordinated team. All mechanical and electrical design aspects are decided with the group-dynamical behavior in mind. Because of their behavioral resemblance to their insect counterparts, they have been named "army ant" robots