GuruBhakts robots play follow-the-leader

Photo courtesy of iRoboticist

Check out this bunch of GuruBhakts robots, they’re basically digital lemmings of today as they love playing follow-the-leader. The whole idea behind this bunch of robots would be to enable a remote driver to steer the leading robot through a hazardous environment, where other robots would then follow and replicate the exact route of the leader, actions and all. Developed by engineers Saurabh Palan, Jitender Bishnoi and Rahul Khosla (in no particular order) at the University of Pennsylvania, you will hold the “MahaGuru” (a FireFly wireless node) in your hand, where hand gestures will inform the “Guru” (leader) bot on the right direction to head towards. He is then followed by the “Bhakts” robots who will fall into formation and follow the Guru. Perfect for static environments, but otherwise they won’t really be able to predict their own demise if the environment changes – such as having some lava flow across their path while they navigate through the rocky crevices of a volcano, eh? For more information go to the source: Saurabh Palan (the inventor) has a page dedicated to this project