Incredible Collaboration of Swam Robotics

Incredible Collaboration of Swam Robotics:

In the very near future, these researchers believe robots will combine together to do all the tasks assigned to them. The Swarmanoid Project is a glorious example of a glimpse into the future which demonstrates 60 robots working together in a collaborative environment. The goal of the swarm robotic project (4 years in the making) is to use the different capabilities of each class of robot and combine them into a system to accomplish tasks.

The “Eye bots” sense the environment and provide an aerial overview. “Hand-bots” can climb vertical surfaces of walls or grab objects located in the environment. “Foot-bots” move on rough terrain and transport either robots. This distributed robotic system is inspired from the social behavior of insects where each member of the colony performs a particular task.

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Swarms Of Robots Out To Steal Your Books

Swarms Of Robots Out To Steal Your Books: "

Watch out Seal Team Six, there’s a new group of special forces entering the mix – and they’re out for your literature.

Evan Ackerman over at IEEE has written an interesting blog post about the Swarmanoid project.

The swarmanoid robots consist of three types, each specializing in specific tasks: hands, feet, and eyes. When their powers combine they turn into an unstoppable machine on a mission to steal your valuables.

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Video: Raid of the robot swarm

Video: Raid of the robot swarm: "Thanks to our sister site, New Scientist, for highlighting this rather sinister one - a co-ordinated raid by 'eye-bots', 'foot-bots', and 'hand-bots' to grab a book from a high shelf.

They are many, and they work together. And they are getting more clever...

(The award-winning film is by Mauro Birattari and Rehan O'Grady)




Thanks to our sister site, New Scientist, for highlighting this rather sinister one - a co-ordinated raid by 'eye-bots', 'foot-bots', and 'hand-bots' to grab a book from a high shelf.

They are many, and they work together. And they are getting more clever...

(The award-winning film is by Mauro Birattari and Rehan O'Grady)



Melissae Fellet writes:

You could call it Mission Impossible: Robot Library Heist. An army of flying, rolling, and climbing robots have been taught to work together to find and snatch a book from a high shelf.

In a striking display of military-like precision, the robotic team, dubbed the 'Swarmanoid', attacks the problem with flying 'eye-bots' and rolling 'foot-bots'. A 'hand-bot' then fires a grappling hook-like device up to the ceiling and scales the bookshelf. Footage of the experiment, conducted by Marco Dorigo at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and colleagues, won the video competition at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in San Francisco earlier this week.

It's a simple demonstration, but in the future Dorigo says the robots could be tasked with more difficult and important tasks. For instance, a bot team equipped like firefighters could wait in a building and spring to action when disaster strikes.

Read the full post >>

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Robots listen only to the leader when building a roving quadcopter landing pad

Robots listen only to the leader when building a roving quadcopter landing pad: "

Swarm robotics is really starting to produce some interesting results. This image is from the video embedded after the break that show a group of five robots creating a landing platform for a quadrotor helicopter. The four that actually make up the platform are not in contact with each other, but instead following commands from the leader. We’re impressed by the helicopter’s ability to target and land on the moving platform. Takeoff appears to be another issue, as the platform bots stop moving until the quadcopter is airborne again.

These robots are part of a Graduate project at Georgia Tech. [Ted Macdonald] has been working along with others to implement an organizational algorithm that guides the swarm. The method requires that the robots have an overview of the location of all others in the swarm. This is done with high-speed cameras like we’ve seen in other robotic control projects. But that doesn’t discourage us. If you already have a flying robot as part of the swarm, you might as well add a few more to serve as the eyes in the sky.

[Thanks Supertroopa via Engadget]

Filed under: robots hacks

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Voice controlled robot controlled by an Android phone

Voice controlled robot controlled by an Android phone: "

[Jeff] sent in a build of a voice controlled robot he just finished based on the Android ADK and an iRobot Create.

The robot is able to obey voice commands telling it where to go. Currently the robot responds to forward, reverse, left, right, stop, and ‘whistle while you work.’ It’s a creative use of the Android ADK with some obvious applications, but this project really shines with the write up on instructables. It’s rare that we’ve seen a project so well documented; it’s a great project for someone who wants to get their feet wet in the world of robotics.

[Jeff]‘s write up goes through the steps of hooking up the ADK board to iRobot and providing all the electronic necessities. [Jeff] graciously provided the code for his robot if anyone would like to add to his project.

The ultimate goal [Jeff] is currently working towards is something akin to a TurtleBot, while keeping the voice control of the robot. In all, a very nice project.

RF Transceivers

Hi!

Long time without news, I'm sorry!

But now i'm fully ready to begin the development of my swarm of iRobots!

Today I will talk about the cheap RF transceivers I found at sparkfun (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9582).

They are FM transceiver with configurable frequency bandwitch, SPI interface, internal FIFO (very small, but very useful). Right now I'm programming the eLua software to test them:

Here I'm using the STM32 kit to talk with two RFM12 (one on each SPI port) they will simply echo each other as a test application.

I will create soon a GITHub Repo to share the code of this post and futures ones!