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ROS Integration for Miniature Mobile Robots
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In this paper, the feasibility of using the Robot Operating System (ROS) for controlling miniature size mobile robots was investigated. Open-source and low-cost robots employ limited processors, hence running ROS on such systems is very challenging. Therefore, we provide a compact, low-cost, and open-source module enabling miniature multi and swarm robotic systems of different sizes and types to be integrated with ROS. To investigate the feasibility of the proposed system, several experiments using a single robot and multi-robots were implemented and the results demonstrated the amenability of the system to be integrated in low-cost and open-source miniature size mobile robots.
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... However, most swarm robots, including HeRo, are unable to process a full-fledged native ROS instance given the restricted CPU resources. To integrate these functionalities to less powerful microcontrollers without a complete instance of ROS, we implemented the communication module over the rosserial protocol, which has been proved as a reliable and scalable communication method for swarm systems [36]. Rosserial 5 is a protocol for wrapping standard ROS serialized messages and multiplexing multiple topics and services over a network socket. ...
... A typical network addresses 254 devices, but network techniques (e.g., subnets) allow increasing this limit as much as we need. A complete study showing the reliability and scalability of using this protocol for swarm robots is present in [36]. ...
The current state of electronic component miniaturization coupled with the increasing efficiency in hardware and software allow the development of smaller and compact robotic systems. The convenience of using these small, simple, yet capable robots has gathered the research community’s attention towards practical applications of swarm robotics. This paper presents the design of a novel platform for swarm robotics applications that is low cost, easy to assemble using off-the-shelf components, and deeply integrated with the most used robotic framework available today: ROS (Robot Operating System). The robotic platform is entirely open, composed of a 3D printed body and open-source software. We describe its architecture, present its main features, and evaluate its functionalities executing experiments using a couple of robots. Results demonstrate that the proposed mobile robot is capable of performing different swarm tasks, given its small size and reduced cost, being suitable for swarm robotics research and education.
... To study the possibility of controlling Mona using ROS commands, a breakout board has been made that supports a Teensy 3.2 module. 3 Additionally a WiFi module (WINC1500 4 ) was attached on top of Mona and [45]. ...
... This module was used in MRAS lab activity and it was used for study on bio-inspired swarm aggregation scenario preseted in [48]. The second module shown in Fig. 13b is ROS communication board [45]. The module has been developed to study the feasibility of using ROS as the communication protocol for Mona, Fig. 13c. ...
Mobile robots are playing a significant role in Higher Education science and engineering teaching, as they offer a flexible platform to explore and teach a wide-range of topics such as mechanics, electronics and software. Unfortunately the widespread adoption is limited by their high cost and the complexity of user interfaces and programming tools. To overcome these issues, a new affordable, adaptable and easy-to-use robotic platform is proposed. Mona is a low-cost, open-source and open-hardware mobile robot, which has been developed to be compatible with a number of standard programming environments. The robot has been successfully used for both education and research at The University of Manchester, UK.
... The focus is on remote access and democratization of swarm robot experiments, while it lacks access to robot-level sensing data at the control interface. Among the ROS-supported platforms, Mona [15], WsBot [16] and the SMARTmBot [17] stand out, but they either lack high-power computing or onboard odometry modules. ...
Experiments using large numbers of miniature swarm robots are desirable to teach, study, and test multi-robot and swarm intelligence algorithms and their applications. To realize the full potential of a swarm robot, it should be capable of not only motion but also sensing, computing, communication, and power management modules with multiple options. Current swarm robot platforms developed for commercial and academic research purposes lack several of these critical attributes by focusing only on a few of these aspects. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the HeRoSwarm, a fully-capable swarm robot platform with open-source hardware and software support. The proposed robot hardware is a low-cost design with commercial off-the-shelf components that uniquely integrates multiple sensing, communication, and computing modalities with various power management capabilities into a tiny footprint. Moreover, our swarm robot with odometry capability with Robot Operating Systems (ROS) support is unique in its kind. This simple yet powerful swarm robot design has been extensively verified with different prototyping variants and multi-robot experimental demonstrations.
... A typical network addresses 254 devices, but network techniques (e.g., subnets) allow increasing this limit as much as we need. A complete study showing the reliability and scalability of using this protocol for swarm robots is present in [34]. ...
The current state of electronic component miniaturization coupled with the increasing efficiency in hardware and software allow the development of smaller and compact robotic systems. The convenience of using these small, simple, yet capable robots has gathered the research community's attention towards practical applications of swarm robotics. This paper presents the design of a novel platform for swarm robotics applications that is low cost, easy to assemble using off-the-shelf components, and deeply integrated with the most used robotic framework available today: ROS (Robot Operating System). The robotic platform is entirely open, composed of a 3D printed body and open-source software. We describe its architecture, present its main features, and evaluate its functionalities executing experiments using a couple of robots. Results demonstrate that the proposed mobile robot is very effective given its small size and reduced cost, being suitable for swarm robotics research and education.
... Although ROS has become the de facto standard for robotics middleware in single-robot and multi-robot studies, the swarm robotics research community has generally been reluctant to adopt it. This can partly be attributed to the fact that many swarm hardware platforms are microcontroller-based, so cannot run ROS on-board [24], however ROS integration can still be achieved via wireless communication and the rosserial interface -see the Mona [25] and HeRo [22] swarm platforms. Additionally, the ROS communication model is inherently centralised, which is antithetical to the philosophy of many swarm algorithms. ...
This paper presents a hardware revision of the Pi-puck extension board that now includes support for the e-puck2. This Raspberry Pi interface for the e-puck robot provides a feature-rich experimentation platform suitable for multi-robot and swarm robotics research. We also present a new expansion board that features a 9-DOF IMU and XBee interface for increased functionality. We detail the revised Pi-puck hardware and software ecosystem, including ROS support that now allows mobile robotics algorithms and utilities developed by the ROS community to be leveraged by swarm robotics researchers. We also present the results of an illustrative multi-robot mapping experiment using new long-range Time-of-Flight distance sensor modules, to demonstrate the ease-of use and efficacy of this new Pi-puck ecosystem.
... sensors and indicators. Several modules are currently available for Mona such as ROS (Robot Operating System) module [74] and vision board [33] for bio-inspired image processing [24]. It is easy to develop external modules for Mona that supports several communication approaches including I 2 C, RS232, SPI, and direct general purpose digital pins. ...
Swarm robotics is a relatively new research field that employs multiple robots (tens, hundreds or even thousands) that collaborate on complex tasks. There are several issues which limit the real-world application of swarm robotic scenarios, e.g. autonomy time, communication methods, and cost of commercialised robots. We present a platform, which aims to overcome the aforementioned limitations while using off-the-shelf components and freely-available software. The platform combines (i) a versatile open-hardware micro-robot capable of local and global communication, (ii) commercially-available wireless charging modules which provide virtually unlimited robot operation time, (iii) open-source marker-based robot tracking system for automated experiment evaluation, (iv) and a LCD display or a light projector to simulate environmental cues and pheromone communication. To demonstrate the versatility of the system, we present several scenarios, where our system was used.
The electric vehicle is an attractive tool for the study of autonomous vehicles. In education, it can provide students with concepts on the hardware and software aspects of mobile robotics; therefore, this paper proposes the autonomous control of a low-cost car-like vehicle based on real-time image processing. The vehicle is developed to implement an autonomous control algorithm using image processing, detection of horizontal and vertical traffic signs on the road. In the design of the vehicle, the transmission and steering are modified to resemble the behaviour of an electric vehicle. The implementation of artificial vision uses low-cost elements and free software such as Raspberry Pi with its respective camera module and an Arduino. The Haar Cascade classifier is used to classify the vertical signage, which consists of fast object detection based on automatic learning.
Different geopolitical conflicts of recent years have led to mass migration of several civilian populations. These migrations take place in militarized zones, indicating real danger contexts for the populations. Indeed, civilians are increasingly targeted during military assaults. Defense and security needs have increased; therefore, there is a need to prioritize the protection of migrants. Very few or no arrangements are available to manage the scale of displacement and the protection of civilians during migration. In order to increase their security during mass migration in an inhospitable territory, this article proposes an assistive system using a team of mobile robots, labeled a rover swarm that is able to provide safety area around the migrants. We suggest a coordination algorithm including CNN and fuzzy logic that allows the swarm to synchronize their movements and provide better sensor coverage of the environment. Implementation is carried out using on a reduced scale rover to enable evaluation of the functionalities of the suggested software architecture and algorithms. Results bring new perspectives to helping and protecting migrants with a swarm that evolves in a complex and dynamic environment.
Mobile robots are playing a significant role in Higher Education science and engineering teaching, as they offer a flexible platform to explore and teach a wide-range of topics such as mechanics, electronics and software. Unfortunately the widespread adoption is limited by their high cost and the complexity of user interfaces and programming tools. To overcome these issues, a new affordable, adaptable and easy-to-use robotic platform is proposed. Mona is a low-cost, open-source and open-hardware mobile robot, which has been developed to be compatible with a number of standard programming environments. The robot has been successfully used for both education and research at The University of Manchester, UK.
This book provides an introduction to Swarm Robotics, which is the application of methods from swarm intelligence to robotics. It goes on to present methods that allow readers to understand how to design large-scale robot systems by going through many example scenarios on topics such as aggregation, coordinated motion (flocking), task allocation, self-assembly, collective construction, and environmental monitoring. The author explains the methodology behind building multiple, simple robots and how the complexity emerges from the multiple interactions between these robots such that they are able to solve difficult tasks. The book can be used as a short textbook for specialized courses or as an introduction to Swarm Robotics for graduate students, researchers, and professionals who want a concise introduction to the field.
• Provides a quick introduction to the robotics aspect of swarm intelligence;
• Outlines how swarm robotics is relevant as a key technology in robotics, transport, and medicine (nanorobotics), with many references to real world examples and popular literature;
• Allows readers to acquire the fundamentals of how to design and model a swarm robotic system, including relevant mathematical definitions and tools.
"Given the increasing number of sophisticated robots sharing our lives,
the study of how large number of robots, so-called robot swarms,
interact among themselves and with fellow humans to organize their
activities and perform ever more complex tasks is becoming of paramount
importance. With this book on swarm robotics, Heiko Hamann gives an
important contribution to the foundations of this exciting research field."
Prof. Marco Dorigo, Ph.D.
Directeur de Recherches du FNRS
IRIDIA
Université libre de Bruxelles
Belgium
Swarm robotics studies the intelligent collective behaviour emerging from long-term interactions of large number of simple robots. However, maintaining a large number of robots operational for long time periods requires significant battery capacity, which is an issue for small robots. Therefore, re-charging systems such as automated battery-swapping stations have been implemented. These systems require that the robots interrupt, albeit shortly, their activity, which influences the swarm behaviour. In this paper, a low-cost on-the-fly wireless charging system, composed of several charging cells, is proposed for use in swarm robotic research studies. To determine the system’s ability to support perpetual swarm operation, a probabilistic model that takes into account the swarm size, robot behaviour and charging area configuration, is outlined. Based on the model, a prototype system with 12 charging cells and a small mobile robot, Mona, was developed. A series of long-term experiments with different arenas and behavioural configurations indicated the model’s accuracy and demonstrated the system’s ability to support perpetual operation of multi-robotic system.
Aggregation is one of the most fundamental behaviors and has been studied in swarm robotic researches for more than two decades. Studies in biology have revealed that the environment is a preeminent factor, especially in cue-based aggregation. This can be defined as aggregation at a particular location which is a heat or a light source acting as a cue indicating an optimal zone. In swarm robotics, studies on cue-based aggregation mainly focused on different methods of aggregation and different parameters such as population size. Although of utmost importance, environmental effects on aggregation performance have not been studied systematically. In this paper, we study the effects of different environmental factors: size, texture and number of cues in a static setting, and moving cues in a dynamic setting using real robots. We used the aggregation time and size of the aggregate as the two metrics with which to measure aggregation performance. We performed real robot experiments with different population sizes and evaluated the performance of aggregation using the defined metrics. We also proposed a probabilistic aggregation model and predicted the aggregation performance accurately in most of the settings. The results of the experiments show that environmental conditions affect the aggregation performance considerably and have to be studied in depth.
We present Buzz, a novel programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms.
Buzz advocates a compositional approach, offering primitives to define swarm
behaviors both from the perspective of the single robot and of the overall
swarm. Single-robot primitives include robot-specific instructions and
manipulation of neighborhood data. Swarm-based primitives allow for the dynamic
management of robot teams, and for sharing information globally across the
swarm. Self-organization stems from the completely decentralized mechanisms
upon which the Buzz run-time platform is based. The language can be extended to
add new primitives (thus supporting heterogeneous robot swarms), and its
run-time platform is designed to be laid on top of other frameworks, such as
Robot Operating System. We showcase the capabilities of Buzz by providing code
examples, and analyze scalability and robustness of the run-time platform
through realistic simulated experiments with representative swarm algorithms.
Robotic swarms that take inspiration from nature are becoming a fascinating topic for multi-robot researchers. The aim is to control a large number of simple robots in order to solve common complex tasks. Due to the hardware complexities and cost of robot platforms, current research in swarm robotics is mostly performed by simulation software. The simulation of large numbers of these robots in robotic swarm applications is extremely complex and often inaccurate due to the poor modelling of external conditions. In this paper, we present the design of a low-cost, open-platform, autonomous micro-robot (Colias) for robotic swarm applications. Colias employs a circular platform with a diameter of 4 cm. It has a maximum speed of 35 cm/s which enables it to be used in swarm scenarios very quickly over large arenas. Long-range infrared modules with an adjustable output power allow the robot to communicate with its direct neighbours at a range of 0.5 cm to 2 m. Colias has been designed as a complete platform with supporting software development tools for robotics education and research. It has been tested in both individual and swarm scenarios, and the observed results demonstrate its feasibility for use as a micro-sized mobile robot and as a low-cost platform for robot swarm applications.
The paper introduces the Psi Swarm robot, a platform developed to allow both affordable research in swarm robotics and versatility for teaching programming and robotics concepts. Motivated by the goals of reducing cost and construction complexity of existing swarm platforms, we have developed a trackable, sensor-rich and expandable platform which needs only a computer with internet browser to program. This paper outlines the design of the platform and the development of a tablet-computer based programming environment for the robot, intended to teach primary school aged children programming concepts.
In computational science and computer graphics, there is a strong requirement to represent and visualize information in the real domain, and many visualization data structures and algorithms have been proposed to achieve this aim. Unfortunately, the dataflow model that is often selected to address this issue in visualization systems is not flexible enough to visualize newly invented data structures and algorithms because this scheme can accept only specific data structures. To address this problem, we propose a new visualization tool, RViz, which is independent of the input information data structures. Since there is no requirement for additional efforts to manage the flow networks and the interface to abstracted information is simple in RViz, any scientific information visualization algorithms are easier to implement than the dataflow model. In this paper, we provide case studies in which we have successfully implemented new data structures and related algorithms using RViz, including geometry synthesis, distance field representation, and implicit surface reconstruction. Through these cases, we show how RViz helps users visualize and understand any hidden insights in input information.
Mobile robots developed at the Institute of Systems and Robotics (ISR) Coimbra feature ZigBee technology for inter-robot communication. The main aim of this paper is to implement and validate ad hoc wireless communication functions between robotic teammates using the ZigBee technology, thus integrating and developing the features of the XBee Original Equipment Manufacturer Radio Frequency module via standard Arduino Serial Commands. This work provides a useful instructive tool for research, enabling the interaction and cooperation of a team of mobile robots in areas such as swarm robotics, multi-robot patrolling, search and rescue, among others. In order to validate the functional requirements, several experiments were performed at the level of peer communication, namely: i) analysis of the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) of messages by peers to estimate inter-robot distances for localization purposes; ii) analysis of the communication complexity in experiments with large groups of mobile robots using Zigbee communication modules and its application in a real world exploration scenario. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput. Appl. Eng. Educ. 9999: 1–13, 2015; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21646