It is no secret that we are easily awestruck here at BostInno with the potential offered by robotics. We have highlighted robotics work coming out of large companies here in Mass. like iRobot’s latest foray into tablet driven robots, as well as robotics innovations coming out of academia like MIT (check out this recent robot there which can bake cookies). Harvard is also a hub of robotics research, and in the last couple of weeks researchers there from the Self-organizing Systems Research Group have shared some powerful videos of the relatively low-cost, mini, termite-like robots they have been building.

The first video, shared in early June, is a video of what these Harvard researchers call Kilobots. 29 of these small, autonomous, self-organizing robots are seen interacting in “collective behaviors” such as foraging and following-the-leader below:

The Self Organizing Systems Research Group states,

Biological systems, from multicellular organisms to social insects (“superorganisms”), get tremendous mileage from the cooperation of vast numbers of cheap, unreliable, and limited individuals. As we build embedded systems with similar characteristics — modular robots, robot swarms, sensor networks, programmable materials — can we achieve the kind of complexity and reliability that nature achieves?

The next video, shared last week, is of a robot named Kali under the same group’s Termes Project. Kali autonomously constructs a staircase to reach a “cliff” of unknown height. According to the researchers, s/he uses previous experience to determine what should be built next in the sequence of stairs through IR range/pattern sensors and an internal tilt sensor:

As for big robots built around Boston, we just had to include this classic video of Boston Dynamic’s Big Dog – enjoy!