Symbrion (Symbiotic Evolutionary Robot Organisms) is a project funded by the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
between 2008 and 2013 to develop a framework in which a homogeneous
swarm
Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving ''en masse'' or migrating in some direction. ...
of miniature interdependent
robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may ...
s can co-assemble into a larger robotic organism to gain problem-solving momentum.
One of the key aspects of Symbrion is inspired by the biological world: an artificial
genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding g ...
that allows storing and evolution of suboptimal configurations in order to increase the speed of adaptation.
The SYMBRION project does not start from zero; previous development and research from projects I-SWARM and the
open-source SWARMROBOT serve as a mounting point. A large part of the developments within Symbrion is open-source and open-hardware.
Co-operating universities
*
Universität Stuttgart
The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wit ...
, Germany (Coordination)
*
Universität Graz, Austria
*
Vrije Universiteit
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...
, Netherlands
*
Universität Karlsruhe
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association.
KIT was created in 2009 w ...
, Germany
*
Flanders Institute of Biotechnology, Belgium
*
University of the West of England
The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a public research university, located in and around Bristol, England.
The institution was know as the Bristol Polytechnic in 1970; it received university status in 1992 and ...
, Bristol, UK
*
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen Eberhard is an old Germanic name meaning the strength or courage of a wild boar.
People
First name
*Eberhard of Friuli (815–866), Duke and key figure in the Carolingian Empire
*Eberhard of Béthune (died 1212), Flemish grammarian
*Eberhard I, Du ...
, Germany
*
University of York, UK
*
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
*
Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, France
*
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
See also
*
Swarm robotics
Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. ″In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between ...
External links
Symbrion homepage
{{Robotics
Robotics projects
Multi-robot systems
2008 in robotics