We first mentioned Kilobots back in our story 10 Robots Inspired by Animals and Insects. Since then, the insect-inspired robots have become available outside of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Buy your own swarm from Swiss company K-Team and start programming away. The Kilobots work kind of like ants in a colony, coordinating to evenly space themselves when moving, bring back “food” to their nest and autonomously synch up their lights to blink in unison. Warning: These are mainly meant for researchers, so if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to have a lot of useless robots on your hands.
Price: $1,237 for Kilobot 10-Pack, $552.60 for Kilobot Controller
Programming Skills Required: Extensive
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