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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Dana Randall and Dan Goldman in Goldman’s lab at Georgia Tech.In a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, physicists run experiments with robots that look as though they came from the dollar store. The robots can’t move through space. They can’t communicate. Mostly they flap their little arms, like beetles stuck on their backs.
But put a lot of these objects together and you get something from nothing: They hit each other, nudge each other and tangle with each other. And eventually, they start to work as a unit. Researchers are learning how to control these systems so that they function in a manner similar to swarms of bees or colonies of ants.
Georgia Tech’s Dana Randall (College of Computing) and Dan Goldman (College of Sciences) discuss their research: a combination of algorithms, computer science and physical experiments in their recent Quanta Magazine article.
