Biblio

Swarm robotics, a combination of Swarm intelligence and robotics, is inspired from how the nature swarms, such as flock of birds, swarm of bees, ants, fishes etc. These group behaviours show great flexibility and robustness which enable the robots to perform various tasks like pattern formation, rescue and military operation, space expedition etc. This paper discusses an algorithm for forming patterns, which are English alphabets, by identical robots, in a finite amount of time and also analyses outcome of the algorithm. In order to implement the algorithm, 9 identical circular robots of diameter 15 cm are used, each having a Node MCU module and a rotary encoder attached to one wheel of the robot. The robots are initially placed at the centres of an imaginary 3×3 grid, on a white sheet of paper, of dimensions 250cm × 250 cm. All the robots are connected to the laptop's network via wifi and data send from the laptop is received by the Node MCU modules. This data includes the distance to be moved and the angle to be turned by each robot in order to form the letter. The rotary encoders enable the robot to move specific distances and turn specific angles, with high accuracy, by real time feedback. The algorithm is written in Python and image processing is done using OpenCV. Certain approximations are used in order to implement collision avoidance. Finally after calibration, the word given as input, is formed letter by letter, using these 9 identical robots.