In current robotics research there is a vast body of work on algorithms and control methods for groups of decentralized cooperating robots, called a swarm or collective. These algorithms are generally meant to control collectives of hundreds or even thousands of robots; however, for reasons of cost, time, or complexity, they are generally validated in simulation only, or on a group of a few 10s of robots. To address this issue, we present Kilobot, a low-cost robot designed to make testing collective algorithms on hundreds or thousands of robots accessible to robotics researchers.

To enable the possibility of large Kilobot collectives where the number of robots is an order of magnitude larger than the largest that exist today, each robot is made with low-cost parts and takes 5 minutes to assemble. Furthermore, the robot design allows a single user to easily oversee the operation of a large Kilobot collective, such as programming, powering on, and charging all robots, which would be dificult or impossible to do with many existing robotic systems. We demonstrate the capabilities of the Kilobot as a collective robot, using a 29 robot test collective to implement some popular swarm behaviors

http://youtu.be/GnyDAuqorGo

Introduction to Kilobot

The following video describes the features of each Kilobot robot, and how they can be controlled in a group

http://youtu.be/ISMwLCFwgK4

Kilobot Project: IROS 2011 Demo of a 100 robot swarm

This video shows clips from the IROS 2011 robot exhibition in San Francisco. A 100 kilobot robots travelled from Boston to California; the demonstration shows the robots performing a simple diffusive behavior, where they move randomly so long as they can hear neighbors but stop if they no longer hear the swarm.

http://youtu.be/qBUFX41e1mc

Kilobot RESOURCES

The following page contains information on how to build and program Kilobots. To build the robots, it is very useful to have experience in atmel microprocessors, and pcb design and assembly. This is currently a beta release, so please let us know if there is any confusing or missing information, by emailing mike at mrubenst@seas.harvard.edu

All Kilobot information is made availible under the creative commons attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license more info on the license can be found at at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

The main Kilobot webpage is http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/ssr/projects/progSA/kilobot.html

All the information to build and use Kilobot can be found in this zip file – (Or here)

This zip file contains the following:

1. Kilobot user guide, which describes how to build, configure, and program the Kilobot system.
2. Skeleton code for Kilobot
3. Code for the overhead controller
4. Code for the calibration board
5. Software to operate the overhead controller
6. Documents nessicary to build the robots, overhead controller, and calibration board. These include pcb files, Bill of material, and Schematics.

 Kilobot Guide

Download This Guide

You can Download this book with the following link. Copy and Paste this link to your Browser Address Bar.
http://www.robotee.com/VP/11014-Kilobot-Guide.pdf

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