Abstract
In this article, we present a novel high-performance millirobot ( milli- robot- Toronto), designed to allow for the testing of complex swarm-behaviours, including human–swarm interaction. milli- robot- Toronto, built only with off-the-shelf components, has locomotion, processing and sensing capabilities that significantly improve upon existing designs, while maintaining one of the smallest footprints among current millirobots. As complementary software to this hardware development, herein, we also present a new global swarm-topology estimation algorithm. The method is novel in that it uniquely fuses incomplete location data collected by the individual robots in a distributed manner to optimally estimate the topology of the overall swarm using a centralized computer. It is a generalized technique usable by any swarm comprising robots capable of collecting location estimates of neighbouring robots. Numerous experiments, evaluating the performance of milli- robot- Toronto and the proposed optimal swarm-topology estimation algorithm, are also included.
Highlights
Small robots, typically categorized as milli, micro- or nanorobots,[1,2,3] have applications in a variety of areas
We present a new method for swarm-topology estimation that utilizes the capabilities of mROBerTO to estimate the overall topology of the swarm
The experiments presented focus only on validating the global swarm-topology estimation method proposed in this article
Summary
Typically categorized as milli-, micro- or nanorobots,[1,2,3] have applications in a variety of areas. Some applications include use in surveillance,[4,5,6] wilderness search and rescue,[7,8,9,10,11] urban search and rescue,[12,13,14] medicine,[15,16] micro-assembly[17] and wireless sensor networks.[18,19] In the work of Kashino et al.,[7,8] a millirobot was used to perform wilderness search and rescue experiments in a scaled-down lab environment. Other designs of note include self-folding origami robots,[20] bio-inspired legged robots[21,22] and units that can pull objects heavier than their own body weight.[23]
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