Drones of the sea learn to swarm (Video) ZDNet

Think Portugal's maritime mastery is a thing of the past? A team of researchers from the Institute of Telecommunications at University Institute of Lisbon and from University of Lisbon in Portugal are the first to demonstrate a swarm of intelligent aquatic surface robots in a real-world environment. A video describing the team's work has been nominated for "Best Robot Video Award" at the prestigious Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) video competition: "Swarm robotics is a paradigm shift," says Dr. Anders Christensen, the principal investigator on the project. "We rely on many small, simple and inexpensive robots, instead of a single or a few large, complex and expensive robots." Swarms have the potential to scale to hundreds or thousands of robots and cover large areas, making them ideal for tasks such as environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and maritime surveillance.