Abstract
Swarm Robotic experiments are ideally performed on real robots. However, a cost versus versatility trade-off exists between simpler and more advanced swarm robots. The simpler swarm robots provide limited features and thus, although suitable for simpler swarm tasks, lack versatility in the types of tasks that may be approached. On the other hand, advanced swarm robots provide a broader range of features, enabling a wide range of tasks to be approached, from simple to advanced. To address this trade-off, an available and versatile robotic platform is proposed: the Cheap, Interchangeable Robotic Platform — the ChIRP robot. The basic platform implements mandatory features required for most swarm experiments, providing a cheap simple and extendible platform. Further, extensions (including both electronic and mechanical features) enable an advanced specialised swarm robot tailored to the needs of a given research agenda. The design considerations and implementation details are presented herein. Further, an example swarm task for the basic ChIRP robot is presented together with an example task illustrating an extension of the ChIRP robot.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Şahin, E.: Swarm robotics: From sources of inspiration to domains of application. In: Şahin, E., Spears, W.M. (eds.) Swarm Robotics 2004. LNCS, vol. 3342, pp. 10–20. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Sahin, E., Girgin, S., Bayindir, L., Turgut, A.E.: Swarm robotics. In: Blum, C., Merkle, D. (eds.) Swarm Intelligence. Natural Computing Series, pp. 87–100. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Karafotias, G., Haasdijk, E., Eiben, A.E.: An algorithm for distributed on-line, on-board evolutionary robotics. In: Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, GECCO 2011, pp. 171–178. ACM, New York (2011)
Montanier, J.M., Bredeche, N.: Surviving the tragedy of commons: Emergence of altruism in a population of evolving autonomous agents. In: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL 2011, pp. 550–557 (2011)
Jakobi, N., Husband, P., Harvey, I.: Noise and the reality gap: The use of simulation in evolutionary robotics. In: Morán, F., Merelo, J.J., Moreno, A., Chacon, P. (eds.) ECAL 1995. LNCS, vol. 929, pp. 704–720. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)
Nolfi, S., Floreano, D., Miglino, O., Mondada, F.: How to Evolve Autonomous Robots: Different Approaches in Evolutionary Robotics. In: Brooks, R.A., Maes, P. (eds.) Artificial life IV: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Artificial Life, pp. 190–197. MIT Press, MA (1994)
Bongard, J., Lipson, H.: Nonlinear system identification using coevolution of models and tests. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 9, 361–384 (2005)
Koos, S., Mouret, J.B., Doncieux, S.: Automatic system identification based on coevolution of models and tests. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh conference on Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2009, pp. 560–567. IEEE Press, Piscataway (2009)
Prieto, A., Becerra, J.A., Bellas, F., Duro, R.J.: Open-ended evolution as a means to self-organize heterogeneous multi-robot systems in real time. Robot. Auton. Syst. 58, 1282–1291 (2010)
Rubenstein, M., Ahler, C., Nagpal, R.: Kilobot: A low cost scalable robot system for collective behaviors. In: 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA, pp. 3293–3298 (2012)
Maris, M., Boeckhorst, R.: Exploiting physical constraints: heap formation through behavioral error in a group of robots. In: Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 1996, vol. 3, pp. 1655–1660. IEEE (1996)
Mouret, J.-B., Doncieux, S.: Encouraging behavioral diversity in evolutionary robotics: an empirical study. Evolutionary Computation 20(1), 91–133 (2011)
Soysal, O., Sahin, E.: Probabilistic aggregation strategies in swarm robotic systems. In: Proceedings 2005 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, SIS 2005, pp. 325–332. IEEE (2005)
Kornienko, S.: IR-based communication and perception in microrobotic swarms. arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.3617 (2011)
Bonani, M., Longchamp, V., Magnenat, S., Retornaz, P., Burnier, D., Roulet, G., Vaussard, F., Bleuler, H., Mondada, F.: The marXbot, a miniature mobile robot opening new perspectives for the collective-robotic research. In: 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS, pp. 4187–4193 (2010)
Dorigo, M., Floreano, D., Gambardella, L.M., Mondada, F., Nolfi, S., Baaboura, T., Birattari, M., Bonani, M., Brambilla, M., Brutschy, A., et al.: Swarmanoid: a novel concept for the study of heterogeneous robotic swarms. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (2013) (in press)
Mondada, F., Bonani, M., Raemy, X., Pugh, J., Cianci, C., Klaptocz, A., Magnenat, S., Christophe Zufferey, J., Floreano, D., Martinoli, A.: The e-puck, a robot designed for education in engineering. In: Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions, pp. 59–65 (2009)
K-Team: Khepera iii homepage (2013), http://www.k-team.com/mobile-robotics-products/khepera-iii/
McLurkin, J., Lynch, A.J., Rixner, S., Barr, T.W., Chou, A., Foster, K., Bilstein, S.: A low-cost multi-robot system for research, teaching, and outreach. In: Martinoli, A., Mondada, F., Correll, N., Mermoud, G., Egerstedt, M., Hsieh, M.A., Parker, L.E., Støy, K. (eds.) Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. STAR, vol. 83, pp. 597–609. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
CRABlab-Team: Chirp homepage (2013), https://chirp.idi.ntnu.no
Berg, J., Karud, C.H.: Swarm intelligence in bio-inspired robotics. Master’s thesis, Department of Computer and Information Science, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Skjetne, C., Haddow, P.C., Rye, A., Schei, H., Montanier, JM. (2014). The ChIRP Robot: A Versatile Swarm Robot Platform. In: Kim, JH., Matson, E., Myung, H., Xu, P., Karray, F. (eds) Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications 2. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 274. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05582-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05582-4_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-05581-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05582-4
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)