Heterogeneous Robot Swarm – Hardware Design and Implementation

Swarm robotics is one the most fascinating, new research areas in the field of robotics, and one of it's grand challenge is the design of swarm robots that are both heterogeneous and self-sufficient. This can be crucial for robots exposed to environments that are unstructured or not easily accessible for a human operator, such as a collapsed building, the deep sea, or the surface of another planet. In Swarm robotics; self-assembly, self-reconfigurability and self-replication are among the most important characteristics as they can add extra capabilities and functionality to the robots besides the robustness, flexibility and scalability. Developing a swarm robot system with heterogeneity and larger behavioral repertoire is addressed in this work. This project is a comprehensive study of the hardware architecture of the homogeneous robot swarm and several problems related to the important aspects of robot's hardware, such as: sensory units, communication among the modules, and hardware components. Most of the hardware platforms used in the swarm robot system are homogeneous and use centralized control architecture for task completion. The hardware architecture is designed and implemented for UB heterogeneous robot swarm with both decentralized and centralized control, depending on the task requirement. Each robot in the UB heterogeneous swarm is equipped with different sensors, actuators, microcontroller and communication modules, which makes them distinct from each other from a hardware point of view. The methodology provides detailed guidelines in designing and implementing the hardware architecture of the heterogeneous UB robot swarm with plug and play approach. We divided the design module into three main categories - sensory modules, locomotion and manipulation, communication and control. We conjecture that the hardware architecture of heterogeneous swarm robots implemented in this work is the most sophisticated and modular design to date

ROLE OF GANDHAK RASAYAN IN SHUSHKA VICHARCHIKA (ECZEMA)

In Ayurveda context, eleven types Kshudrakushtha are described and Vicharchika (Eczema) is one of them. In ancient text, there described many lines of treatmentsof Vicharchika (Eczema) like leech application, local application and many oral medicines. Gandhak Rasayanais one of the oral medicines described for many skin diseases.For this study, 30 patients of Shushka vicharchika (Dry Eczema)having complaint of Kandu, Daha, Ruja, Sparshaasahatva, Tvakvaivarnya were selected.Vicharchika (Eczema)is Kaphajavyadhi and Raktadushti is also observed. Gandhak Rasayana (Bharat Bhaishajya Ratnakar 1153) mainly acts on skin, blood and it is Rasayana in action. So it more or less acts on all Doshas and Dhatus. Gandhak isushnaveeryatmaka and Katu rasa Vipaki so acts as best Kaphghna and Kledaghna. During making of Gandhak Rasayana different twelve Drawyabhavanas are given to Shudhagandhak. These drugs helps to destroy the Samprapti of Vichrchika due to its Ushnavirya and Katukashay rasa. Some Bhavanadravyas has property of Madhur rasa, Sheet Virya due to which they acts as Pittaghna and Raktaprasadana and helps to cure Vicharchika (Eczema).Daha, Kandu, Ruja and Sparshaasahatva were significantly reduced. Also significant relief in Tvak-vaivarnyata was observed

PLC system for producing perforated music

In this application, a Mitsubishi FX3U PLC is used to collect data from a piece of music with a set sampling rate. The data is stored in the PLC data register sequentially and then used to control a punching system which perforates the notes on a plastic paper roll in the same sequence. The roll is used in musical instruments, automata, and mechanical music devices

UB Robot Swarm System: Design and Implementation

In this poster we described the hardware architecture of an inexpensive, heterogeneous, mobile robot swarm, designed and developed at RISC lab, University of Bridgeport. Each UB robot swarm is equipped with sensors, actuators, control and communication units, power supply, and interconnection mechanism. Robot swarms have become a new research paradigm in the last ten years offering novel approaches, such as self-reconfigurabity, self-assembly, self-replication and self-learning. Developing a multi-agent robot system with heterogeneity and larger behavioral repertoire is a great challenge. This robot swarm is capable of performing user defined tasks such as wall painting, mapping, human rescue operations, task allocation, obstacle avoidance, and object transportation

Hardware Architecture Review of Swarm Robotics System: Self-Reconfigurability, Self-Reassembly, and Self-Replication

Swarm robotics is one of the most fascinating and new research areas of recent decades, and one of the grand challenges of robotics is the design of swarm robots that are self-sufficient. This can be crucial for robots exposed to environments that are unstructured or not easily accessible for a human operator, such as the inside of a blood vessel, a collapsed building, the deep sea, or the surface of another planet. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on hardware architecture and several other important aspects of modular swarm robots, such as self-reconfigurability, self-replication, and self-assembly. The key factors in designing and building a group of swarm robots are cost and miniaturization with robustness, flexibility, and scalability. In robotics intelligence, self-assembly and self-reconfigurability are among the most important characteristics as they can add additional capabilities and functionality to swarm robots. Simulation and model design for swarm robotics is highly complex and expensive, especially when attempting to model the behavior of large swarm robot groups.http://dx.doi.org/10.5402/2013/84960

UBSwarm: Design of a Software Environment to Deploy Multiple Decentralized Robots

This article presents a high-level configuration and task assignment software package that distributes algorithms on a swarm of robots. The software allows the robots to operate in a swarm fashion. When the swarm robotic system adopts a decentralized approach, the desired collective behaviors emerge from local decisions made by the robots themselves according to their environment. Using its GUI, the proposed system expects the operator to select between several available robot agents and assign the swarm of robots a particular task from a set of available tasks