Open E-puck Range & Bearing miniaturized board for local communication in swarm robotics

Abstract

We have designed and built a new open hardware/software board that lets miniaturized robots communicate and at the same time obtain the range and bearing of the source of emission. The open E-puck Range & Bearing board improves an existing infrared relative localization/communication software library (libIrcom) developed for the e-puck robot and based on its on-board infrared sensors. The board allows the robots to have an embodied, decentralized and scalable communication system. Its use and capabilities are demonstrated via an alignment experiment.