The Best Drone for Every Beginner. Modular robot reassembles when kicked apart. Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme. A Swarm of Ant-Sized Robots, at Your Service. SRI’s new swarm of ant-sized robots can move incredibly quickly around objects and up walls. While the robots imagined in science fiction novels have often looked like humans, today’s robotic armies are emerging in all shapes and sizes. Take the little army of bots made by SRI International, called “Magnetically Actuated Micro-Robots,” that are designed to build small things on small scales.
They look like a swarm of ants, and they can be controlled by a central computer. The bots are incredibly fast for their size, able to move at 35 centimeters a second, according to a video posted by SRI. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, wrote that this is the equivalent speed of a human “running at slightly under Mach 1.” Not bad for something smaller than a pea. Photo The bots are also very agile, able to weave in and out of tiny objects and capable of climbing up or down walls. A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors.