A Low-Cost Educational Platform for Swarm Robotics

Abstract

Swarm robotics usually involves a large number of robots, dealing with the emergence of intelligent collective behaviors based on local interactions, thus mimicking collective behaviors found in biological societies (e.g. ants, bees, bacteria, etc.). Therefore, both miniaturization and cost of robotic platform are key-factors in swarm robotics scenarios, in order to allow affordable experimentation with real platforms. This article presents a miniature low-cost robot design, denoted as eSwarBot (Educational Swarm Robot), which specifically targets engineering education and swarm robotics in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Engineering Institute of Coimbra. eSwarBot was designed as an Arduino-based open platform requiring basic knowledge of other areas beyond robotics, like mechanics, control or energy management. Furthermore, the comparison with other platforms used in swarm applications is also presented.