RoboFold: A platform for Protein-folding Inspired Robot Swarms *

Natural swarms have inspired various controlling algorithms for swarm robotics, while few of them were programmed in a similar way as the natural swarms. Defining a reliable programming method is still a daunting challenge in swarm robotics. In nature, the information of 3D protein structure is programmed in the sequence of amino acids of the protein. To mimic the programming method of protein folding, we present a platform for investigating protein-folding inspired programming method for robot swarms. This platform includes three parts: a vibration machine, protein-like robot sequences, and recording devices. The preliminary results presented here demonstrated the effectiveness of this platform and the feasibility of protein-folding inspired programming method for robot swarms.