The Swarmanoid project (IST-022888) is a Future and Emerging Technologies (FET-OPEN) project funded by the European Commission.

The main scientific objective of this research project is the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system. The system will be made up of heterogeneous, dynamically connected, small autonomous robots. Collectively, these robots will form what we call a swarmanoid. The swarmanoid that we intend to build will be comprised of numerous (about 60) autonomous robots of three types: eye-bots,hand-bots, and foot-bots.

The Swarmanoid project is the successor project to the Swarm-bots project, and will build on the results obtained during the Swarm-bots project. Information on the Swarm-bots project can be found at the following address: www.swarm-bots.org.

The project coordinator is Professor Marco Dorigo.

Dr. Marco Dorigo, the project coordinator and one of the founders of the swarm intelligence and swarm robotics research fields, has been awarded, in November 2007, the “CajAstur International Prize for Soft Computing“.

Swarmanoid Hardware

1-Foot-Bots : 

The foot-bot is a particular configuration of modules based on the marXbot robotic platform. The foot-bot configuration includes a top CPU and vision module, a distance scnaner, a range and bearing module, a self-assembling module and a basic (mobility & battery) module.

The post SWARMONOID PROJECT – 11084 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

“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.

The post Robot Swarms Could Help Colonize Mars I-SWARM Project 31018 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

“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/

The post SMAVNET Robots Create Communications Networks for Disaster Relief 31017 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

Robots by the dozen are prohibitively expensive, so actually testing how large swarms would work together is often limited to computer simulations. That’s where Harvard’s Kilobots are beginning to bear fruit – at a cost of US$14 each in batches of a thousand, they’re a tenth the cost of their cheapest competitor. At such bargain-basement prices, Michael Rubenstein, Christian Ahler, and Radhika Nagpal at the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group have begun to build their own little robot army.

A single Kilobot communicates with its neighbors by pulsing its infrared LED, which shines and reflects off the floor beneath it. Any Kilobot within 10 cm will pick up the message with an infrared photodiode receiver. They move around on their stilt-like legs by simply vibrating.

Back in 2011 when the project first came to our attention, we saw how 29 Kilobots could demonstrate some interesting collective behaviors. In one experiment, the robots acted like ants foraging for food, and in another they played follow-the-leader, effectively forming a jittery little conga line.

Now the group has published some videos where up to 100 Kilobots intermingle, a feat that would have been reserved for computer simulations just a few years ago. In the first video, the Kilobots have been programmed to seek out light using a visible light sensor on each robot.

Videos

Swarm Robotics – Collective transport with 100 Kilobots

External Links

http://www.gizmag.com/one-hundred-harvard-kilobot-swarm/25898/

The post 100 Kilobots Swarm Together at Harward 31012 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

“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

The post MODULAR, FLYING ROBOTIC SWARM – 31006 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

This video is about a real cooperative solution for Swarm Robotics;

I have always imagined different kind of robots operate together. For Example fyling robots, heavy duty robots, small robots all work as members of a robotic society.  Flying robots can fly but their battery time will be limited so after some time they can land on battery carrier robots and continue their operation after charging on them.

Some robots may caryy wireless systems to increse the range of wireless. Some robots may carry high definition cameras so the swarm could be managed by humans. So this video is a good example for what is Swarm Robotics Bring to us in the future.

“Spatially Targeted Communication and Self-Assembly,” by Nithin Mathews, Anders Lyhne Christensen, Rehan O’Grady, and Marco Dorigo, from Universite Libre de Bruxelles and Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, was presented at IROS 2012 in Vilamoura, Portugal.

http://youtu.be/i3ernrkZ91E

” A future tip for robot invasions: Aim your gun for the fliers, they command the troops” (A youtube user’s comment  

The post Swarm Robotics – Ground Robots Cooperate with Flying AR Drone – 11048 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

Video: http://youtu.be/uIuRc1r_N34

The post Aldebaran Robotics – Nao Robots All Dancing Show 11044 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

About the Project

University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll likes to think in multiples. If one robot can accomplish a singular task, think how much more could be accomplished if you had hundreds of them. Correll and his computer science research team, including research associate Dustin Reishus and professional research assistant Nick Farrow, have developed a basic robotic building block, which he hopes to reproduce in large quantities to develop increasingly complex systems.

Recently the team created a swarm of 20 robots, each the size of a pingpong ball, which they call “droplets.” When the droplets swarm together, Correll said, they form a “liquid that thinks.”

Terminator Movie like Robot Swarms

To accelerate the pace of innovation, he has created a lab where students can explore and develop new applications of robotics with basic, inexpensive tools. Similar to the fictional “nanomorphs” depicted in the “Terminator” films, large swarms of intelligent robotic devices could be used for a range of tasks. Swarms of robots could be unleashed to contain an oil spill or to self-assemble into a piece of hardware after being launched separately into space, Correll said.

Correll plans to use the droplets to demonstrate self-assembly and swarm-intelligent behaviors such as pattern recognition, sensor-based motion and adaptive shape change. These behaviors could then be transferred to large swarms for water- or air-based tasks. Correll hopes to create a design methodology for aggregating the droplets into more complex behaviors such as assembling parts of a large space telescope or an aircraft.

Awards

In the fall, Correll received the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development award known as “CAREER.” In addition, he has received support from NSF’s Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research program, as well as NASA and the U.S. Air Force.

He also is continuing work on robotic garden technology he developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. Correll has been working with Joseph Tanner in CU-Boulder’s aerospace engineering sciences department to further develop the technology, involving autonomous sensors and robots that can tend gardens, in conjunction with a model of a long-term space habitat being built by students.

Concept of Collaborating Celss

Correll says there is virtually no limit to what might be created through distributed intelligence systems. “Every living organism is made from a swarm of collaborating cells,” he said. “Perhaps some day, our swarms will colonize space where they will assemble habitats and lush gardens for future space explorers.”

For a short video of Correll’s team developing swarm droplets visit

http://www.colorado.edu/news/multimedia/researchers-creating-team-tiny-robots.

For more information about Correll’s lab at CU-Boulder visit

http://correll.cs.colorado.edu/

Video:http://youtu.be/qEtpwljR5mY

The post Swarm Robotics at CU-Boulder – 11038 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

Arbitrary target patterns are represented with an optimal robot deployment, using a method that is independent of the number of robots. Furthermore, the trajectories are visually appealing in the sense of being smooth, oscillation free, and showing fast convergence. A distributed controller guarantees collision free trajectories while taking into account the kinematics of differentially driven robots. Experimental results are provided for a representative set of patterns, for a swarm of up to ten differentially-driven robots, and for fifty virtual robots in simulation.

http://youtu.be/pJVS-9sMiVY

The post Artistic pattern formation with multiple robots – Robot Swarm 11031 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

More making details in http://slidesha.re/JjUikH

http://youtu.be/SzXFGeB6Hxs

The post Multi-Robot Formation Control by self-made Robots 11030 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.