The book never stood a chance. The swarm of robots (aka the "swarmanoid") that set out to retrieve it was just to fast and organized...well, maybe not so fast. The project is a Future and Emerging Technologies (FET-OPEN) experiment of Marco Dorigo at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and funded by the Commission of the European Union. It's a great example of current research on robots communicating and working together to accomplish a task. Lucky for us, the swarmanoiod has a way to go before it reaches Borg status. And yes, we did notice the C3PO poster in the background. Bonus points!
Watch the award winning video on the project below:
More information on swarm bot projects can be found at www.swarm-bots.org.