A £4.6 million project to create swarms of hundreds of autonomous, Transformer-style robots has been launched.

Scientists aim to create a prototype team of self-organising, shape-changing mini robots that work as a team by 2013.

The self-healing robots will be able to dock with each other, share energy and co-operate to maximise their abilities to achieve different tasks.

Researchers from 10 universities who are collaborating in the European Union-funded Symbrion programme say future applications include search and rescue missions, space exploration and medicine.

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Prof Alan Winfield, of the University of the West of England, Bristol, said: "A swarm could be released into a collapsed building following an earthquake.

"They could form themselves into teams searching for survivors or to lift rubble off stranded people.

"Some robots might form a chain allowing rescue workers to communicate with survivors while others assemble themselves into a ‘medicine bot' to give first aid.

"The robots have functionality on their own, but they can also combine together or adapt and change as the situation requires.

"The individual robots won't change physically, but they will adapt and evolve their functionally."

Scientists involved in the Symbrion project will develop software that allows the individual robots – which will be around an inch square – to collaborate in order to use their different attributes to maximise their performance.

They will develop the principles that can be built into hardware and software to allow robots swarms to evolve, adapt and collaborate without human supervision according to the situations they face.

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