Coordination of mobile robots with master-slave architecture for a service application

Abstract

Swarm robotics is based on the characteristics displayed by the insects and their colony and is applied to solve real world problems utilizing multi-robot systems. Research in this field has demonstrated the ability of such robot systems to assemble, inspect, disperse, aggregate and follow trails. A set of mobile and self-sufficient robots which has very restricted capabilities can form intricate patterns in the environment they inhabit. The simple patterns can be used by the robots to achieve high level tasks. In the proposed work, a set of robots are coordinating to form a specific pattern around the object with step wise linear motion and are programmed to push the object from a source position to the destination in an obstacle free environment. Initially the robots are placed in known positions. ZigBee communication protocol is used for interaction among the robots. A single robot is chosen as a central coordinator and controls the movement of the rest of the robots in the swarm. Master bot decides on the path to be taken and also supplies the slave bots with the coordinates to be reached. The entire scenario has been simulated using the open source tool Player/Stage and the hardware implementation has been done using micromouse chassis set up and the Arduino Uno controller board.