Marc Szymanski

Get in touch: cooperative decision making based on robot-to-robot collisions

We demonstrate the ability of a swarm of autonomous micro-robots to perform collective decision making in a dynamic environment. This decision making is an emergent property of decentralized self-organization, which results from executing a very simple bio-inspired algorithm. This algorithm allows the robotic swarm to choose from several distinct light sources in the environment and to aggregate in the area with the highest illuminance. Interestingly, these decisions are formed by the collective, although no information is exchanged by the robots. The only communicative act is the detection of robot-to-robot encounters. We studied the performance of the robotic swarm under four environmental conditions and investigated the dynamics of the aggregation behaviour as well as the flexibility and the robustness of the solutions. In summary, we can report that the tested robotic swarm showed two main characteristic features of swarm systems: it behaved flexible and the achieved solutions were very robust. This was achieved with limited individual sensor abilities and with low computational effort on each single robot in the swarm.

Symbiotic robot organisms: REPLICATOR and SYMBRION projects

Cooperation and competition among stand - alone swarm agents can increase the collective fitness of the whole system. An interesting form of collective system is demonstrated by some bacteria and fungi, which can build symbiotic organisms. Symbiotic communities can enable new functional capabilities which allow all members to survive better in their environment. In this article we show an overview of two large European projects dealing with new collective robotic systems which utilize principles derived from natural symbiosis. The paper provides also an overview of typical hardware, software and methodological challenges arose along these projects, as well as some prototypes and on-going experiments available on this stage.

JaMOS - A MDL2/spl epsi/ based Operating System for Swarm Micro Robotics

Micro robots in large scale swarms often have a very restricted program memory which limits the robots application range. We present a finite state machine operating system for swarm micro robots, that can overcome such problems and gives the designer of swarm algorithms a tool that is easy to handle. The operating systems flow control or rather the robots control program is represented in the Motion Description Language Two Extended (MDL2epsiv). MDL2epsiv is based on MDLepsiv but has been extended to a fully functional behaviour description language as shown in this paper. The MDL2epsiv based control programs are encoded in a byte code that is interpreted on a micro controller. The byte-code concept significantly reduces the size of the control program which will be shown in this paper.

Distributed shortest-path finding by a micro-robot swarm

This paper describes a distributed algorithm for solving the shortest path problem with a swarm of JASMINE micro-robots. Each robot is only connected via infra-red communication with its neighbours. Based on local information exchange and some simple rules the swarm manages to find the shortest path (shortest path in the number of robots on the path) in a labyrinth with dead-ends and cycles. The full algorithm and simulation results are presented in this paper.

Introducing Wanda - A new robot for research, education, and Arts

A new autonomous mobile robot for research, education and Arts is presented. The robot features a rich variety of sensors and an extendable processing unit while still maintaining very small size (approx. 51 mm in diameter). The robot can be used in combination with a very versatile arena for robot experiments that allows to setup and execute experiments in an easy and automated fashion, which also includes automatic recharging of the robot. We will provide an overview of the basic modular hardware design of the robot including a detailed description of the cpu, power management, bus system, actuators and sensors. A special section will be dedicated to a detailed description of the communication capabilities of the robot. Furthermore we will present the software architecture which provides high-level access to the robots hardware.

The Wanda Robot and Its Development System for Swarm Algorithms

We introduce a new development system for swarm algorithms to be used in research and education, composed of a swarm of Wanda miniature robots, a beamer assisted arena for robot experiments and a new framework for the accurate simulation of robotic swarms. The Wanda robot is easy manufacturable and was especially designed to be used as a swarm robot. It is accurately implemented in the new simulation framework which provides powerful methods for the efficient and exact simulation of sensor data for all kinds of vision based sensors, such as rgbsensors, camera sensors, infrared communication and ranging sensors by utilizing graphics hardware. Utilizing the behavior based controller language MDL2e which is implemented on the real robot and in the simulation, the complete system aims to allow for a quick and easy development, testing and demonstration of swarm algorithms.

The Robot Formation Language — A formal description of formations for collective robots

In this paper we will present the Robot Formation Language (RFL), a topology description language for the formation of multi robot systems, such as robot swarms or self-reconfigurable modular robot platforms. The RFL supports homogeneous as well as heterogeneous multi robot platforms. This is important especially for modular robots (we also call them robot organisms), as there can also be robots included which have a different kinematic behaviour. Additionally, it supports tools, such as active wheels, grippers or structural elements, which enhance the capabilities of a modular robot platform. As we focus on creating organisms out of a robot swarm (i.e. the swarm robots have capabilities to connect to each other to build a modular robot organism), it is important to have a common language, which describes the swarm as well as the organism. Using the RFL, we will define a distance between two formations and describe how the calculation for this purpose can be distributed among the members of the collective. RFL cannot only be used to describe the formation of a multi robot system, but it can also be used to retrieve the kinematic chain of an organism or as a genome to evolve different organism shapes for example. It is also useful for the swarm robots to identify their position in the swarm.

SymbricatorRTOS: A flexible and Dynamic framework for bio-inspired robot control systems and evolution

One of the main aspects of the ‘SYMBRION’ and ‘REPLICATOR’ projects is that the robots can aggregate to form a multi-robot organism. For this reason the control mechanisms have to be able to control a single robot, a swarm of robots or an aggregated collective organism. To break down the complexity of development and to take the interaction with the environment and other robots into account, bio-inspired and evolutionary concepts are applied. In this paper we describe the underlying software architecture for the projects to enable different controller types, evolution and learning.

Investigating the effect of pruning on the diversity and fitness of robot controllers based on MDL2∈ during Genetic Programming

In this paper we propose a new diversity measure based on the correlation of bit strings for the analysis of Genetic Programming (GP) experiments. The diversity measure has been applied to analyse the impact of pruning on the diversity of a population during genetic programming and its relation to the convergence time of the fitness function. To show the usability of the proposed diversity measure a GP experiment is introduced where simulated Jasmine robots have to learn a collison avoidance behaviour to find their way through a maze. A full analysis of this experiment is given with different fixed pruning strategies in respect to the population diversity and fitness. The GP has been done on behaviour-based robot controllers implemented in MDL2∈. MDL2∈ has the advantage that it provides a very compact bit string representation of the control programme, which can be used for diversity analysis.

Towards a Real Micro Robotic Swarm

This paper introduces the I-SWARM project (Intelligent Small World Autonomous Robots for Micro-manipulation). This project aims at the development and production of a very large-scale artificial swarm (VLSAS) composed of several hundred micro-robots with a proposed size of 2× 2× 1 mm. This will be the first realisation of a swarm with such a large number of robots. The extremely small size of the robots will impose severe limitations on their sensory and computational capabilities which is to be compensated by collective behaviour and emerging swarm effects. This paper presents an overview over one faces in the realisation of such a swarm based on extremely miniaturised robots. Further a new concept for an on-board ego-positioning system is proposed and some initial concepts for simulation and task planning in such a VLSAS are presented.