An Actor-based Programming Framework for Swarm Robotic Systems

Abstract

Programming cooperative tasks for autonomous swarm robotic systems has always been challenging. In this paper, we introduce a concept `Actor', as a virtualization for robot platforms. Every robot platform in the swarm robotic system carries out the task and interacts with others as an Actor. We designed an Actor-based framework for the management of autonomous swarm robotic systems including modules and interfaces for the Actor, the collective Actor, and task management. The Actor-based framework enables task developers to explicitly model cooperative tasks without intricacies about the detailed robotic algorithms or the specific robot brands, and eases the burden on robotic algorithm developers by providing common functionalities. The proposed framework is implemented in C++ and validated quantitatively and qualitatively with a swarm of thirty drones by simulations and a swarm of ten drones by in-field tests.