Symbrion (Symbiotic Evolutionary Robot Organisms) is a project funded by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

between 2008 and 2013 to develop a framework in which a homogeneous

swarm Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving ''en masse'' or migrating in some direction. ...

of miniature interdependent

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be ...

s can co-assemble into a larger robotic organism to gain problem-solving momentum. One of the key aspects of Symbrion is inspired by the biological world: an artificial

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ...

that allows storing and evolution of suboptimal configurations in order to increase the speed of adaptation. The SYMBRION project does not start from zero; previous development and research from projects I-SWARM and the

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

SWARMROBOT serve as a mounting point. A large part of the developments within Symbrion is open-source and open-hardware.

Co-operating universities

* Universität Stuttgart, Germany (Coordination) *

Universität Graz The University of Graz (german: link=no, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ), located in Graz, Austria, is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria. History The univers ...

, Austria *

Vrije Universiteit The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

, Netherlands * Universität Karlsruhe, Germany *

Flanders Institute of Biotechnology VIB is a research institute located in Flanders, Belgium. It was founded by the Flemish government in 1995, and became a full-fledged institute on 1 January 1996. The main objective of VIB is to strengthen the excellence of Flemish life sciences r ...

, Belgium *

University of the West of England The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a public research university, located in and around Bristol, England. The institution was know as the Bristol Polytechnic in 1970; it received university status in 1992 and ...

, Bristol, UK * Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany *

University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...

, UK * Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium *

Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informat ...

, France * Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic

External links

Symbrion homepage
{{Robotics Robotics projects Multi-robot systems 2008 in robotics

Co-operating universities

See also

External links