Swarm Robotics

32 views
Skip to first unread message

Deepali Adlakha

unread,
Mar 26, 2014, 5:15:29 AM3/26/14
to elec...@googlegroups.com
I want to see some implemented Swarm Intelligence application. Do we have such currently going projects? How difficult is it to build one?

Regards 
Deepali Adlakha
Computer Science And Engineering
IIT Bombay

Riddhish Bhalodia

unread,
Mar 26, 2014, 5:25:36 AM3/26/14
to elec...@googlegroups.com
Electronics Club do not have any ongoing swarm intelligence projects. You can check out Systems and Control department, there are few people there who work on such stuff.

Adwait Dongare

unread,
Mar 26, 2014, 6:08:37 AM3/26/14
to elec...@googlegroups.com
I can think of a few examples, though they are american projects:
1) MIT CSAIL's M-Blocks
2) Berkeley's Terraswarm

Swarm robotic projects vary a lot depending on their objectives. They can be extremely difficult to implement if you want to start from scratch and implement all electronics, mechanics and hardware yourself. However, you can always start with ready hardware (like the Firebird bot from Nex Robotics (or multiple copies of your own design)). In such a case you can focus more on solving the actual problem rather than debug a lot of hardware.

Generally, swarm problems tend to use differently designed bots together as a team to complete an objective or many copies of the same to do something. In the case of M-Blocks above the objective is motion. Another common problem is to reach a point thru a number of obstacles: walls, movable debris etc using differently capable bots. Or how to map a room/area quickly using N bots/planes equipped with cameras etc.

There have been some previous projects in the institute (as BTP/DDP, not STAB) wherein a set of bots were programmed to follow the leader. You could call this a basic swarm project. People in SysCon do indeed have some swarm projects going on, though I'm not really sure of their exact problem statements.

If you are very adamant about a working prototype, just look at any modern car. Multiple independent controllers and sensors (engines, ECU, safety, electronics, power, windows, proximity sensing etc) working together. Its a non-intuitive example because the communication is wired as opposed to the normal expectation of wireless.

Adwait Dongare,
Senior Undergraduate,
Engineering Physics,
IIT Bombay


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Electronics Club IITB" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to elec-club+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Deepali Adlakha

unread,
Mar 26, 2014, 6:23:15 AM3/26/14
to elec...@googlegroups.com
Thanks!
--

Sampath Satti

unread,
Mar 26, 2014, 7:07:11 AM3/26/14
to elec...@googlegroups.com

There's also cubelets, which retail on sparkfun. Might be same as m cubes.

Adwait Dongare

unread,
Mar 26, 2014, 8:26:12 AM3/26/14
to elec...@googlegroups.com
Cubelets cant be programmed, right?

Adwait Dongare,
Senior Undergraduate,
Engineering Physics,
IIT Bombay


Ashay Tejwani

unread,
Mar 26, 2014, 8:32:05 AM3/26/14
to Elec-Club Group

Ashay Tejwani |
 4th Year UnderGraduate | Metallurgical Engineering and Material Science
| IIT Bombay
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages