From left: Adrian Logan and Clyde Korn, NASA Swarmathon participants from CCNY.
Developing search algorithms for robotic swarms is the challenge for members of The City College of New York’s Robotics Club in the second annual NASA Swarmathon, April 18-20. The 14 students will compete remotely in the virtual competition against 19 other teams from minority serving universities and community colleges. The actual competition will be at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida.
“Swarm robotics is a field where multiple robots are trying to solve one task; they work together to communicate with each other and try and solve that task in the most efficient way possible,” said Clyde Korn, one of the CCNY team’s project leaders. “The reason it’s called swarm robotics is because it models insect swarms, and the way they interact with one another and work as one cohesive unit.”
NASA foresees swarm robotics to be a more effective and efficient way to locate and collect resources on future missions to the Moon or Mars.
The CCNY team comprises engineering, physics and computer science majors, including co-project leaders Adrian Logan (computer engineering) and Eric Tung (chemical engineering). All learned how to program C++ files, a general purpose programing language used as the foundation for Robot Operating System.
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