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>>ANCHOR: Can you just imagine all the innovation in the tech world that's yet to come.
>>I can't. But you know who has the vision who can do it?
>>Norma Holland.
>>Yep. She's at RIT this morning talking about a big weekend.
>>REPORTER: Yeah, it's called Imagine RIT. It's a daylong festival here at RIT on the
campus Saturday 10 to 5. And we've been meeting some awesome students here who are doing some
really cool stuff with technology and, well, these guys you've got to meet. We have Rob
LiVolsi and Alex Karantza, and these two guys have created these robots, these little mini
robots. What are they?
>>ALEX KARANTZA: So this was our senior design project from last year. It is the STAR Project,
the Swarm of Tiny Autonomous Robots.
>>REPORTER: Ahh!
>>ALEX KARANTZA: The idea is that we can manufacture a bunch of small robots that are cheap, and
they can take the place of a single, large robot and be more flexible, more resilient,
things like that. So these are little research platforms that we made all by hand to show
off these principles of swarm robotics.
>>REPORTER: Okay, swarm robotics, and I asked you guys what's the application, and you said,
you know, you could put these on the moon one day eventually, right?
>>ALEX KARANTZA: Yeah, I mean, they're already using them in aeronautics, space exploration.
The idea is you can have a bunch of small, cheap actors that can accomplish a larger
goal without losing an entire big robot in one incident. You can have a bunch of distributed
ones.
>>REPORTER: Rob, you're holding real quick something that you're going to be showing
off tomorrow, right? This is the one you're going to be showing off.
>>ROB LiVOLSI: Yes, correct. We actually made a new design that going to be more manufacturable,
a little bit more robust and have a lot of cool new features. So we're hoping to show
it off tomorrow.
>>REPORTER: Yeah, and again you guys are here. Don't miss these guys, swarm robotics. Sounds
scary, but it's a good thing, and it can save industry a lot of money. So don't forget,
from 10 to 5 tomorrow at RIT. We're going to let the RIT Pep Band take us off and they
are going to be here too, 2 o'clock, at Imagine RIT.
>> [music]
>>ANCHOR: Go Tigers!
>>I'm impressed with what they've invented, and I'm impressed that they're college students
and up before 7 o'clock on a Friday.
>>Yeah, it's a good thing.
>>Good job.