Swarming Canadian Military Robots

Posted 28 Apr 2005 at 21:05 UTC by steve

A recent Nature article describes the Unmanned Ground Unit or GRUNT being developed by Canadian Company, Frontline Robotics. Each GRUNT is a skid-steer vehicle about 2 meters long, weighing 450 kg (based on an Argo Conquest ATV). The autonomous robot has a top speed of 35 km/hr and carries a range of sensors. The most interesting aspect of these robots is that their use of modern swarming/flocking technologies to evolve problem solving strategies and elect leaders dynamically. These behaviors make the GRUNT one of the smarter real-world robots with intelligence almost at the level of social insects likes ants.