Objetivo
The Swarmanoid project proposes a highly innovative way to build robots that can successfully and adaptively live in human-made environments. The main scientific objective of the proposed research is the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system comprising heterogeneous, dynamically connected small autonomous robots so as to form what we call a swarmanoid. The swarmanoid that we intend to build will be comprised of numerous (60) autonomous robots of three types: eye-bots, hand-bots and foot-bots.
Eye-bots are specialised in sensing and analysing the environment from a high position to provide an overview that foot-bots or hand-bots cannot have. Eye-bots fly attached to the ceiling. Hand-bots are specialised in moving and acting in a space zone between the one covered by the foot-bots (the ground) and the one covered by the eye-bots (the ceiling). Hand-bots can climb vertical surfaces of walls or objects located in the environment. Foot-bots are specialised in moving on rough terrain and transporting either objects or other robots; they are based on the robotic platform developed within the European SWARM-BOTS project. The combination of these three types of autonomous agents form an heterogeneous robotic system that is capable of moving in a 3D space.
In addition to the construction of the robots, important scientific contributions will be in the development of distributed algorithms for the control of the swarmanoid and in the study and definition of distributed communication protocols that will make it possible to control the swarmanoid in a distributed, robust, and scalable way.