Division of labor, specialization,* is one of the ways I've been trying to deal with complexity and the curse of dimensionality.** Typical social insects have something like 3-4 castes. Many small multicellular organisms have 10 or more cell types. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies all workers into 867 occupations divided into 23 categories. How many specialized agents one uses should depend upon the environment you're working in and the tasks you're attempting to perform. I currently have 52 small robots*** in my lab and the makings**** of about 20 more. Software is even more varied.
So what specialized hardware has proven to be useful/required? 1. wheeled (and tracked too?) 2. fliers 3. swimmers 4. walkers? (quadrupedal? bipedal too?) 5. pick and place (arms) 6. gantry? 7. snake? 8. hybrid? (for stair climbing?) 9. various grippers/manipulators 10. several different processors? (and memories?) 11. different sensory systems
* In both hardware and software.
** See, for example, my blog of 18 August 2021.
*** This includes a fair amount of duplication. It can take a couple of tries before I manage to get a workable robotic agent capable of performing a given required set of tasks.
**** Lego, Vex IQ, Vex EDR, Meccano, etc.
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