The University of Southampton

ECS student robot project filmed for BBC's One Show

Published: 20 January 2009
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An ECS undergraduate project will be featured later this year on BBC's The One Show.

Presenter Miranda Krestovnikoff visited ECS to film a swarm of tiny robots, inspired by the behaviour of an ant community, which were designed and built as part of an undergraduate project by ECS Electronics students.

The robots have already attracted worldwide publicity after they were exhibited at the Artificial Life Conference in Winchester last August. They cost around £24 to make, so are some of the cheapest robots in the world, and are constructed from parts which are readily commercially available.

Rob Spanton and Jeff Gough, who graduated in July 2008 from ECS and who are now PhD students in the School, demonstrated the robots to Miranda, and explained how they worked together to complete a food-gathering task, communicating with each other used infrared technology.

The sequence will form part of a week-long series on The One Show focusing on biomimetics.

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