Presbyterian College

One of the country's brightest minds in the field of robotics demonstrated his theories on mimicking nature during an entertaining and eye-opening presentation Tuesday at Presbyterian College.

James McLurkin, a doctoral candidate and the manager of the iRobot Swarm project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, brought a small cadre of his SwarmBots into PC's Belk Auditorium – where they performed a variety of cooperative tasks much like bees or ants do in their respective insect colonies.

McLurkin, who built his first robot when he was a teen, turned to nature as a model for his core research developing algorithms and techniques for construction swarms of autonomous robots that are capable of individual tasks that collectively contribute to the goals of the whole group.

Most people – due to the influence of science fiction and popular culture – perceive robots quite differently, McLurkin said. Hollywood, in particular, generally portrays robots in one of three ways – as the "Frankenstein" creation that runs amok, the "Tin Man" searching for ways to become more human, and the "Terminator" plot whereby robots take over the entire world.

McLurkin discussed science fiction author Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics that, on the surface, seem like a reasonable approach to governing robotic behavior and alleviating fears that robots might someday take over the world.

"The problem is that robots can't read," he said. "Robots have no idea how to obey those laws."

Scientists have a hard enough time, McLurkin noted, trying to figure out what real human intelligence is and where it comes from, much less trying to figure out how to develop it artificially. Nonetheless, that isn't stopping scientists from trying. They continue, he said, to explore and develop robots that mimic and interact with human beings or robots that perform tasks that are dangerous or simply dull.

There are robots, for example, that are used by the military to detect enemy combatants or by the police to locate armed criminals. Simple robots are used to clean homes and their more complex cousins have been used to explore the surface of Mars, McLurkin said.

"Fortunately, you don't need to build intelligent robots to make useful robots," he said.

In his research, McLurkin gets large numbers of relatively simple robots to work together and his SwarmBots performed several of those tasks onstage as he explained the hurdles involved.

"Writing software for one robot is hard, " he said. "Writing software for lots of robots – that communicate and cooperate and coordinate – is even harder."

Nonetheless, by programming the individual members of the robot swarm to mimic hive behavior similar to some insect species, they are able to perform fairly complex tasks as a whole. McLurkin discussed the ways bees and ants communicate via scent trails or how they distribute food to ensure the safety and well-being of the entire hive or colony.

McLurkin admitted that nature is a tough act to follow and, thus, it will take a lot of time before robots will catch up.

"I probably won't figure that out for my Ph.D.; I probably won't figure that out in my lifetime," he said.

McLurkin also shared a quick retrospective on his career – beginning with its childhood origins playing with cardboard boxes and building with Legos.

"The moral of the story is to really have fun, to follow your passions, to do the things you really enjoy," he said. "Work very hard, obviously – but don't forget to have fun."