Swarm robotics : Design and implementation

2009

Biological swarm is a fascinating behavior of nature that has been successfully applied to solve human problem especially for robotics application. The high economical cost and large area required to execute swarm robotics scenarios does not permit experimentation with real robot. Model and simulation of the mass number of these robots are extremely complex and often inaccurate. This paper describes the design decision and presents the development of an autonomous miniature mobile-robot (AMiR) for swarm robotics research and education. The large number of robot in these systems allows designing an individual AMiR unit with simple perception and mobile abilities. Hence a large number of robots can be easily and economically feasible to be replicated. AMiR has been designed as a complete platform with supporting software development tools for robotics education and researches in the Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, UPM. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of using this robot to implement swarm robotic applications.

This paper describes the design, development and implementation procedures of a swarm-robotics project at the Machine Intelligence Laboratory (MIL) at the University of Florida. The main objective of this work is to develop a multipurpose and powerful platform for the study and improvement of swarm robotics techniques. The first objective is to produce a set of at least eight small expandable (and easily replicated) robots with on-robot sensory and processing abilities, and with a communication system for off-robot sensors and processing. The second goal is the creation of a cross language platform composed of code written in C, C++ and C#; with a well designed objectoriented platform that closely follows the main paradigms and ideas of object-oriented programming techniques. This paper presents the current state of the ongoing project to create a lowcost, reliable, robust, reusable, movable, size-efficient, powersaving, wireless-capable, and dynamically programmable multiuse research project.

2012

9  Abstract-Swarm robotics is a relatively new field that focuses on controlling large-scale homogeneous multi-robot systems. Swarm robotics draws inspiration from selforganizing behaviour observed in social insects1 like ants, bees and of other animals, called swarm intelligence. One example of SI is bird flocking. By evading collisions, staying close to each other and aligning to local neighbours, birds in a flock avoid predators. These simple rules give rise to a very complex behaviour This paper describe a low-end and easy to implement flocking algorithm which was developed for very simple swarm robots and which works without communication, memory or global information. By adapting traditional flocking algorithms and eliminating the need for communication, we created an algorithm with emergent flocking properties. We analyze its potential of aggregating an initially scattered robot swarm, which is not a trivial task for robots that only have local information.

Swarm Intelligence (SI) is the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems inspired from natural biological systems such as ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth, and fish schooling. Swarm Robotics (SR) is an emerging application of swarm principles to robots, it is the study of how to design groups of homogeneous, small and cheap robots that mimicking insects and animals and acts together for robust, scalable and flexible swarm robotic systems. Swarm robots operate without depending upon any external control and infrastructure, the behaviour of robots depends on interactions between robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act. Swarm Robotics has effectively applied in tasks that are risky and difficult for human being or single robot. This Paper is a review of swarm robotics from origin to its future. It contains discussion on introduction to swarm robotics, design of robot swarm, design of robotics collective behaviours, and interaction mechanism and future of swarm robotics.

Swarm robotics is a fast growing field of multi-robotics. In thisnumber of robots are coordinated in a distributed and uncentralised way. It is based on the use common rules, and simple robots compared to the nature of the task which is to achieve, this task may be complex.Swarm robotics is inspired by social insects. Large number of simple robots is able to perform complex tasks in a more efficient way than a single robot. This improves the efficiency and provides flexibility the group. In this article, an overview of swarm robotics is given, describing its main properties and characteristics and comparing it to general multi-robotic systems. A discussion of the future swarm robotics in real world applications completes this work.

2008

This paper describes the design, development and implementation procedures of a swarm-robotics project at the Machine Intelligence Laboratory (MIL) at the University of Florida. The main objective of this work is to develop a multipurpose and powerful platform for the study and improvement of swarm robotics techniques. The first objective is to produce a set of at least eight small expandable (and easily replicated) robots with on-robot sensory and processing abilities, and with a communication system for off-robot sensors and processing. The second goal is the creation of a cross language platform composed of code written in C, C++ and C#; with a well designed objectoriented platform that closely follows the main paradigms and ideas of object-oriented programming techniques. This paper presents the current state of the ongoing project to create a lowcost, reliable, robust, reusable, movable, size-efficient, powersaving, wireless-capable, and dynamically programmable multiuse research project.

2017 13th Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES)

This paper presents a design for a low-cost research robot based on the small size of the Hexbug Spider toy 1. Our basic modification replaces the robot head with a 3D-printed adapter, consisting of two parts to provide space for sensors, a larger battery, and a printed circuit board (PCB) with Arduino microcontroller, Wi-Fi module, and motor controller. We address the assembling process of such a robot and the programming using Arduino studio. The presented prototype costs less than 70 Euro, and is suitable for swarm robotic experiments and educational purposes.

2011

Swarm robotics usually involves a large number of robots, dealing with the emergence of intelligent collective behaviors based on local interactions, thus mimicking collective behaviors found in biological societies (e.g. ants, bees, bacteria, etc.). Therefore, both miniaturization and cost of robotic platform are key-factors in swarm robotics scenarios, in order to allow affordable experimentation with real platforms. This article presents a miniature low-cost robot design, denoted as eSwarBot (Educational Swarm Robot), which specifically targets engineering education and swarm robotics in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Engineering Institute of Coimbra. eSwarBot was designed as an Arduino-based open platform requiring basic knowledge of other areas beyond robotics, like mechanics, control or energy management. Furthermore, the comparison with other platforms used in swarm applications is also presented.

2012 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Technology in Automation, Control, and Intelligent Systems (CYBER), 2012

ARTICLE INFO Smart systems give rise to smart environments. Concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things make such smart systems more efficient and bring in the idea of automation. In this paper, an attempt to create such a system has been made. The system focuses on an improved version of the Self Organizing Map Approach with which multi-robots communicate with each other to achieve a specific goal. In the proposed system, the work-load which needs to be dealt with is received on the loading bay. The system stays offline when there is no load and becomes active when load arrives. Server stores the load weight in its database and assigns robots to carry out the task of moving the load. Number of robots needed to move the load is then stored into the corresponding weight file so that future work-load can be assigned the required number of robots directly without single persuasion. All the entities of the system are connected together in a network thus making the system conform to the concept of Internet of Things. The system will gradually learn from previous experiences and act accordingly, thus bringing the concept of Artificial Intelligence and hence, automation.

2005

Abstract This paper provides an overview of the SWARM-BOTS project, a robotics project sponsored by the Future and Emerging Technologies program of the European Commission (IST-2000-31010). We describe the s-bot, a small autonomous robot with self-assembling capabilities that we designed and built within the project. Then we illustrate the cooperative object transport scenario that we chose to use as a test-bed for our robots.