An internet for robots to enable them to share information is being developed by an international team of researchers, including a group from Eindhoven University of Technology.

The network has been named RoboEarth and has been four years in development. On Thursday the Eindhoven team will demonstrate the results so far.

According to the project website, four robots will be involved in carring out tasks involving patients in a specially built operating theatre. The robots are linked via the RoboEarth network.

‘These robots will use RoboEarth as a knowledge base, communication medium and computational resource to offload some of their heavy computation,’ the website says.

‘If we want to use robots in human environments, we cannot programme them in advance,’ project leader René van de Molengraft told RTL. ‘This is because there are too many variations. But if a robot has gathered lots of information, it will be able to share it with others.’

The project is a joint venture between five European universities and Philips and is funded by the EU.