Big Hero 6 Microbots: Swarm Robotics

In Big Hero 6, Hiro Hamada doesn’t build one giant fighting robot (originally). He builds thousands of tiny “Microbots.” By themselves, they are useless little magnets. But together, they can form bridges, shields, and massive hammers. This concept is called Swarm Robotics, and it is one of the most cutting-edge fields in modern research.

Strength in Numbers

One ant is weak. A million ants can carry a carcass or build a bridge across water. The core idea is Decentralization. There is no “King Microbot” telling everyone what to do. Each bot follows simple rules compared to its neighbor.

• “If touching neighbor, hold tight.”
• “If gap detected, move to fill.” Complex behavior emerges from simple rules.

Swarm Theory in Competition

In FTC, we don’t have thousands of robots. We have an Alliance of two robots. Red Team vs. Blue Team. 2v2. While we aren’t physically linking together, we practice the basics of Swarm Theory: Coordinated Action.

1. Distributed Tasks (Specialization)

In a swarm, not every bot does the same thing.

• Robot A (The Feeder): Fast, agile. It grabs game pieces from the corner and throws them to the center.
• Robot B (The Scorer): Heavy, precise. It picks up the pieces Robot A threw and puts them in the high goal.
• Result: The cycle time is cut in half. By working together, 1+1=3.

2. Collision Avoidance (Pathfinding)

If two autonomous robots try to go to the same coordinate, they crash. Advanced teams use shared pathfinding.

• Before the match, they agree: “I will take the left lane; you take the right.”
• During the match, sensors detect the ally. If Robot A is in the way, Robot B recalculates its path dynamically.

The Future: Decentralized AI

Real Microbots would need to think without a central brain (The cloud is too slow). We are seeing this now in warehouse robots (Amazon Kiva bots). Hundreds of robots move on a grid. They never crash. They pass packages to each other. They are a real-life Swarm.

Why We Don’t Have Microbots Yet

Power and Processing. A Microbot needs:

1. A battery.
2. A motor.
3. A computer brain.
4. A Radio. Fitting all that into something the size of a finger is currently impossible due to battery density and heat. But every year, tech shrinks. For now, we build 40lb robots that work in pairs. But the students coding those 2-robot swarms today are the ones who will write the code for the million-robot swarms of tomorrow that will build bridges, explore Mars caves, or clean up oil spills.