2 research outputs found
Swarmodroid 1.0: A Modular Bristle-Bot Platform for Robotic Active Matter Studies
Large swarms of extremely simple robots (i.e., capable just of basic motion
activities, like propelling forward or self-rotating) are widely applied to
study collective task performance based on self-organization or local
algorithms instead of sophisticated programming and global swarm coordination.
Moreover, they represent a versatile yet affordable platform for experimental
studies in physics, particularly in active matter - non-equilibrium assemblies
of particles converting their energy to a directed motion. However, a large set
of robotics platforms is being used in different studies, while the universal
design is still lacking. Despite such platforms possess advantages in certain
application scenarios, their large number sufficiently limits further
development of results in the field, as advancing some study requires to buy or
manually produce the corresponding robots. To address this issue, we develop an
open-source Swarmodroid 1.0 platform based on bristle-bots with reconfigurable
3D-printed bodies, external control of motion velocity, and basic capabilities
of velocity profile programming. In addition, we introduce AMPy software
package in Python featuring OpenCV-based extraction of robotic swarm kinematics
accompanied by the evaluation of key physical quantities describing the
collective dynamics. We perform a detailed analysis of individual Swarmodroids'
motion characteristics and address their use cases with two examples: a cargo
transport performed by self-rotating robots and a velocity-dependent jam
formation in a bottleneck by self-propelling robots. Finally, we provide a
comparison of existing centimeter-scale robotic platforms, a review of key
quantities describing collective dynamics of many-particle systems, and a
comprehensive outlook considering potential applications as well as further
directions for fundamental studies and Swarmodroid 1.0 platform development.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, 1 table + Supplementary Information. Comments
are welcom