Florian Christopher Vaussard

The marXbot, a miniature mobile robot opening new perspectives for the collective-robotic research

Collective and swarm robotics explores scenarios involving many robots running at the same time. A good platform for collective-robotic experiments should provide certain features among others: it should have a large battery life, it should be able to perceive its peers, and it should be capable of interacting with them. This paper presents the marXbot, a miniature mobile robot that addresses these needs. The marXbot uses differential-drive treels to provide rough-terrain mobility. The marXbot allows continuous experiments thanks to a sophisticated energy management and a hotswap battery exchange mechanism. The marXbot can self-assemble with peers using a compliant attachment mechanism. The marXbot provides high-quality vision, using two cameras directly interfaced with an ARM processor. Compared to the related work, the marXbot has better energy management, vision, and interaction capabilities. By allowing complex tasks in large environments for long durations, the marXbot opens new perspectives for the collective-robotic research.

Which robot behavior can motivate children to tidy up their toys?: design and evaluation of "ranger"

We present the design approach and evaluation of our prototype called “Ranger”. Ranger is a robotic toy box that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their room. We evaluated Ranger in 14 families with 31 children (2-10 years) using the Wizard-of-Oz technique. This case study explores two different robot behaviors (proactive vs. reactive) and their impact on children’s interaction with the robot and the tidying behavior. The analysis of the video recorded scenarios shows that the proactive robot tended to encourage more playful and explorative behavior in children, whereas the reactive robot triggered more tidying behavior. Our findings hold implications for the design of interactive robots for children, and may also serve as an example of evaluating an early version of a prototype in a real-world setting. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.4 [Information Systems Applications]: Miscellaneous; I.2.9 [Artificial Intelligence]: Robotics— Commercial robots and applications

The Autonomous Photovoltaic MarXbot

Domestic service robots are currently powered by the mains electricity. The growing multiplication of such devices negatively impacts our environment. In this study, we show the feasibility of harvesting energy from natural light in an indoor environment. The design of the harvester is carefully carried out using an experimental characterisation of several solar panels, while the boost converter is optimised to operate at low-light intensities and the robot is enhanced for low-power operations. The resulting harvester is then thoroughly characterised. Finally, a phototaxis experiment is conducted, proving the feasibility of recharging the robot solely by using this form of energy. The possibility of embedding energy harvesting in indoor mobile robots radically changes the potential impact of this technology in our society.

Towards Long-Term Collective Experiments

It is often challenging to manage the battery supply when dealing with a fleet of mobile robots during long experiments. If one uses classical recharge stations, then agents are immobilized during the whole recharge process. In this study, we present a novel approach that employs a battery pack swapping station. Batteries are charged in a rotating barrel, and the robots dock only for the time of the hot-swap process. We attained an unavailability time of only 40 seconds, with a success rate of 100 % on a total of 46 trials. Experiments above 8 hours are performed in three arenas with different configurations, which proves the relevance of our approach.

Towards autonomous energy-wise RObjects

In this article, the RObject concept is first introduced. This is followed by a survey of applicable energy scavenging technologies. Energy is a key issue for the large scale deployment of robotics in daily life, as recharging the batteries places a considerable burden on the end-user and is a waste of energy which has an overall negative impact on the limited resources of our planet. We show how the energy obtained from light, water flow, and human work, could be promising sources of energy for powering low-duty devices. To assess the feasibility of powering future RObjects with technologies, tests were conducted on commonly available robotic vacuum cleaners. These tests established an upper-bound on the power requirements for RObjects. Finally, based on these results, the feasibility of powering RObjects using scavenged energy is discussed.