Assembly of configurations in a networked robotic system: A case study on a reconfigurable interactive table lamp

Abstract

Abstract-In the present study, we are interested in verifying how the progressive addition of constraints on communication and localization impact the performance of a swarm of small robots in shape formation tasks. Identified to be of importance in a swarm-user interaction context, the time required to construct a given spatial configuration is considered as a performance metric. The experimental work reported in this paper starts from global and synchronized localization information, shown to be successful both on a real hardware system and in simulation. In a second step, communication is constrained to a local scale, thus obliging a single designated robot to disseminate the global localization information to the other agents. The reliability of the radio communication channel and its impact upon the performance of the system are considered.

Image and animation display with multiple mobile robots

“…The effect is artistic but there is no mechanism for steering the robots towards a desired configuration to make a specific visual effect. Cianci et al (2008) demonstrated a group of robotic light sources that adopt different geometric configurations to provide flexible environment lighting. The system uses external infrastructure for localization and we take a similar approach.…”

“…Decentralized versions with both synchronous and asynchronous algorithms were also presented by Bertsekas and Casta-on (1991) and Zavlanos et al (2008). An alternative distributed method using nearest-neighbor allocation was used by Cianci et al (2008). The distributed computation is desirable for certain realizations of a multi-robot setup but is not required in our system.…”

Self-Organized Robotic Systems: Large-Scale Experiments in Aggregation and Self-Assembly Using Miniature Robots

“…The first case study presented in this chapter addresses the control and design of a physically distributed table lamp. This study is performed on a system of networked e-puck mobile robots, which-due to their small size and robustness-are ideal for prototyping robotic tools for everyday life [Cianci et al (2008)]. The goal of this project was to explore the opportunities and challenges encountered in the development of a specific application-an interactive distributed table lamp.…”

Virtual Reality-based Intelligent Table Lamp

“…The wireless charging technology has been successfully integrated into the lamp, and simple user interaction has been achieved. The features of the product are rich [11,12]. However, the interactive intelligent lamp with positioning on the face has not yet appeared [13][14][15].…”