“centimeter-scale autonomous robots that co-operate like a colony of ants”
“The key to the effectiveness of micro-robots is their ability to communicate and collaborate”

Hundreds of micro-robots will work together to carry out repairs inside machinery, explore deep-sea environments, and even colonize Mars, according to predictions from the EU-funded I-SWARM project. Marc Szymanski, from the University of Karlsruhe, is part of a team that is developing centimeter-scale autonomous robots that co-operate like a colony of ants. The project has already produced 100 micro-robots, and is close to a mass-producible model.

The benefit of a robotic swarm is that the group can compensate for the failure of individual members. If I-SWARM succeeds in making the design mass-producible, a programmable robotic swarm could be cheaply applied in a wide variety of fields.

“Robot swarms are particularly useful in situations where you need high redundancy. If one robot malfunctions or is damaged it does not cause the mission to fail because another robot simply steps in to fill its place,” Szymanski explains.

The key to the effectiveness of micro-robots is their ability to communicate and collaborate. Ants accomplish this by emitting chemicals, but Szymanski’s team has chosen a different approach. When triggered to communicate, the I-SWARM robots broadcast infrared light – the robots that receive this signal then broadcast it to their neighbors, and so on, until the message is completely dispersed. In this way, a robot can call for assistance when trying to accomplish a task too challenging for individual members of the group.

The brains of the robots are made from flexible printed circuit boards, which are folded into shape in a process Szymanski compares to origami. The I-SWARM robots vary in scale and design: a group called Jasmine consists of wheeled, battery-powered robots, each the size of a two-euro coin; the smallest robots in the initiative are solar-powered, three-millimeter long models which move by vibration, and have eight kilobytes of program memory and two kilobytes of RAM.

“Power is a big issue. The more complex the task, the more energy is required. A robot that needs to lift something [uses] powerful motors and these need lots of energy,” Szymanski says.

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“Swarming Micro Air Vehicle Network (SMAVNET) Project”
“An autopilot controls altitude, airspeed and turn rate and chooses the most economical flight strategy”
“Although the robots are autonomous, they can be monitored and controlled through a swarm-interface running on a single PC”

Swarms of flying robots might sound a bit ominous to those of us anxiously awaiting the inevitable robot uprising that will see humanity drop a notch on the scale of planetary dominance. But swarms of flying robots are just what a project at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is working to create. However, instead of keeping an eye on prisoners in a robot-run internment camp, the Swarming Micro Air Vehicle Network (SMAVNET) Project aims to develop robot swarms that can be deployed in disaster areas to rapidly create communication networks for rescuers.

The individual micro air vehicles (MAVs) are built out of Expanded Polypropylene (EPP) resulting in a weight of just 420g (14.8 ounces). With a wingspan of 80cm (31.5-inches) the MAVs have an electric motor mounted at the back and two control surfaces serving as elevons (combined ailerons and elevator). The robots run on a lithium polymer (LiPo) battery that provides 30 minutes of flying time.

Components

An autopilot controls altitude, airspeed and turn rate, while a micro-controller embedded in the autopilot chooses the most economical flight strategy based on input from three sensors: a gyroscope and two pressure sensors. The autopilot runs on a Toradex Colibri PXA270 CPU board running Linux, which is also connected to an off-the-shelf USB Wi-Fi dongle. In order to log flight trajectories, the robot is also equipped with a u-blox LEA-5H GPS module and a ZigBee (XBee PRO) transmitter.

As is so often the case, the SMAVNET designers turned to nature for inspiration in creating the behavior of the swarm. For the deployment and maintenance of retraction of the swarm MAV network the team turned to the army ants, which are able to lay and maintain pheromone paths from the nest to food sources. This method allows the swarm to maintain communication pathways between a base node and rescuers in the environment.

The robots use wireless communication between the robots themselves as a sensor instead of other methods that depend on the environment (GPS, cameras) or more expensive and heavy methods (lasers, radars). As the move out from their base to the users individual robots will hold position and form a node as the remainder of the swarm continues on until the objective is reached and the network complete. Although the robots are autonomous, they can be monitored and controlled through a swarm-interface running on a single PC.

Although 30 minutes of flight time might be somewhat limiting in a real world disaster situation, the EPFL team has conducted tests of the SMAVNET system that demonstrate its feasibility and provide encouragement for the team to continue with their efforts to create a low-cost system that could be deployed quickly in disaster hit areas.

External Links

http://www.epfl.ch/

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“Flying robots self-assemble into midair swarm”
“Individual vehicles self-assemble, coordinate, and take flight”

The Distributed Flight Array is a Swiss-built group of single-propeller robots that can autonomously dock with each other and hover above the ground. Is it the precursor to a flying robot swarm?

Swiss researchers are developing a robotic platform consisting of multiple single-propeller machines that autonomously dock with each other and take flight. The Distributed Flight Array, under development at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC), may look like a kid’s remote-controlled toy, but it’s a neat example of swarm robotics.

Each vehicle is simply designed, with wheels for ground motion, one propeller, a computer, and infrared sensors that measure the flight angle. They join at random through magnetic links and drive around together. When it’s time to take off, the modules hover for a bit and then fly to a predetermined altitude. They exchange information over a network, maintaining level flight for the whole platform by adjusting individual thrust. The researchers seem barely able to regain control of their creation once it takes flight.

The IDSC researchers have shown in simulated and experimental tests that the array can work with anywhere from 2 to 20 propeller vehicles. But they’ve only flown up to 4 joined together so far. When it’s time to return to the ground, the modules come apart. Their sturdy plastic construction can withstand the impact of a fall from more than 6 feet.

The IDSC group has been developing the array since 2008. Last month, their study was named one of the best conference paper finalists at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Anchorage, Alaska.The researchers don’t mention possible applications for the Distributed Flight Array, but a glance at other IDSC projects such as the autonomously balancing cube shows the institute is open-minded enough to pursue whimsical, artistic endeavors when it comes to robots. Building a swarm of intelligent hunter-killer flying bots must be the farthest thing from their minds.

External Links

http://www.idsc.ethz.ch/Research_DAndrea/DFA

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