Swarm Robotics

Indresh Yadav
 Introduction

Swarm Robotics studies a particular class of

multi-robot system.

 It emphasis aspects like decentralization of

control, robustness, flexibility and scalability.
 Inspiration
 Inspired by the behavior of
social insects.

 Each single ant acts

autonomously following simple
rules and locally interacting
with the other ants.

 A coherent and self-organizing

behavior can be observed at
the colony level.
 The Swarm-Bot
 An s-bot is a small mobile
autonomous robot with
self-assembling
capabilities.

 It weighs 700 g and its

main body has a
diameter of about 12 cm.

 The traction system is

composed of both tracks
and wheels.
 Cylindrical turret mounted
on the chassis by means
of a motorized joint.

 The gripper is mounted on

Turret as some freedom
for lifting object.

 Gripper used for

connecting to S-Bots and
objects.
 Four proximity sensors placed under the chassis
(ground sensors), torque and traction sensor.

 Eight light sensors uniformly distributed around the

turret ,two humidity sensor & 3-axis accelometer.

 Each robot is also equipped with sensors and

devices to detect and communicate with each
other.

 Consists of camera, LED, microphone, loudspeaker.

 Synchronization
 The task requires that each s-bot in the
group displays a simple periodic behavior.

 It means their oscillations are in phase with

each other.

 In order to communicate with each other, s-

bots produce a continuous tone with fixed
frequency and intensity.
 It is perceived by
every robot in arena.

 The tone is perceived

in a binary way.

 One sensory neuron

is used for perception
of sound.
 Co-ordinated Motion
 It is a basic ability due to
physical interaction among s-
bots.

 They must co-ordinate their

action to choose common
direction of movement.

 It can efficiently move only if

the chassis of the assembled
s-bots have the same
orientation.
 A common direction of motion on the basis
of the information provided by their traction
sensor.

 Four sensory neurons encode the intensity

of traction along four directions,
corresponding to the direction of the semi-
axes of the chassis’ frame.

 2 motor neurons control wheels and turret

chassis motor.
 Hole avoidance
 Individual s-bots cannot avoid holes due to
their limited perceptual apparatus.

 To safely navigate arena consisting of holes

Co-ordination motion must be
performed.
Presence of holes must be
communicated.
 Communication among the s-bots
Direct Interactions setup (DI)
Direct Communication setup (DC)
Evolved Communication setup (EC)

 In all three setups (DI, DC and EC), s-bots

are equipped with traction and ground
sensors. In DC and EC, microphones and
speakers are also used.
Advantages
 Fault tolerance

 De-centralized approach

 Flexibility

 Robustness
Limitation
 Self organizing behavior.

 Interaction between individual robot.

 Interaction among components.

 Encoding of robots.
Application
 Plume tracing

 Obstacle avoidance

 Search and rescue

 Surveillance/coverage

 Convoy formation

 Move towards goal by avoiding hurdles

Thank You!!