The configuration of a group of swarm-type robots can be used not only for military purposes or for search operations. Engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) used a swarm of miniature wheeled robots to paint a picture. They compared their project to a “smart brush”, when an artist gives a command to apply a certain pattern in a specific part of the canvas, and the machines do the rest of the work.
The robots-artists in the current version are very primitive, in particular, each carries only one small container with paint and can leave a trace of it, no more. In the future it is planned to put on them several containers with different colours, and initially designed for mixing to get different shades. The robot will be able to vary the colours while working, and if it runs out of some dye, it will ask for help from a swarm mate to jointly draw a pattern of the desired colour.
