Swarm home robots

Abstract

Swarm robotics is a relatively new research area inspired from biological systems such as ant or bee colonies. It composes a system consisting of many small robots with simple control mechanisms capable of achieving complex collective behaviors on the swarm level such as aggregation, pattern formation and collective transportation to name a few. The main motto of this paper is to incorporate the swarm technology in consumer electronics where these are used in the operations like cleaning, pick and place, transportation of the household items from one location to another location in the place we reside. While a single robot can perform the home tasks, it might not be able to perform the tasks quickly. Time will be lost in finishing one task and then moving to another. So, it is evident that more than one robot must be used here. When more than one robot is used, controlling the robots becomes an important issue especially when the target locations and the robots are large in number. So, for easing the control of more than one robot, traits of Swarm behavior are replicated and implemented. Hence, a swarm behavior replicating group consisting of two robots are designed and fabricated that demonstrate how multiple-tasks can be handled effectively by a group of robots that perform individual actions while communicating and acting symbiotically. In the present paper, when target co-ordinates are passed to one robot, while retaining one target location, it passes another location to the other robot. Both start moving towards their target locations, but continue communicating with each other. In event of failure of one of the robots, the other robot takes notice of the failure. It continues to its location, does its work at that location, and then gives a backup at the other target location by performing the task of the robot that failed.