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Developing a Low-Cost Robot Colony

Developing a Low-Cost Robot Colony. General Dynamics Robotic Systems April 19, 2007. Felix Duvallet Colony Project, Robotics Club. Robotics Club at Carnegie Mellon. Building robots for fun since 1984 Mostly undergraduates (over 100 members) Several ongoing projects Colony Battlebots

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Developing a Low-Cost Robot Colony

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  1. Developing a Low-Cost Robot Colony General Dynamics Robotic Systems April 19, 2007 Felix Duvallet Colony Project, Robotics Club

  2. Robotics Club at Carnegie Mellon • Building robots for fun since 1984 • Mostly undergraduates (over 100 members) • Several ongoing projects • Colony • Battlebots • RobOrchestra • … • Operates out of University Center basement • Lab space • Machine Shop www.roboticsclub.org

  3. Colony Project • Robotics Club Project, started in 2003 • About 16 undergraduates • Various years • Different majors (mostly Engineering/CS) • Four weekly meetings • Sources of Funding: • Small Undergraduate Research Grant • Ford Undergraduate Research Grant • Leverage existing research projects (Choset)

  4. Motivation (Why Colonies) • Colonies are everywhere in nature • Robustness to robot failure • Many tasks require cooperation • Coverage may necessitate multiple agents • Inherently interesting research problems • Robots are awesome • More robots are more awesome

  5. Goals • Low-cost robots (~$350) • Homogeneous, distributed architecture (no super-node) • Develop applications that are robust to non-idealities: • Noisy sensor data • Limited computation • Communication delays • Use the Colony as a research platform • Emergent behavior • Path planning • Cooperation • Control • SLAM • …

  6. Where Colony is now • Past: • Substantial work has gone into developing the Colony hardware (robot, sensors) • Infrastructure has been developed (wireless communication, localization) • Present: • Currently developing behaviors • Autonomous recharging and self-sustainability • Future: • Extended duration, large-scale cooperation

  7. Outline • Past Work • Robots • Sensors • Infrastructure • Behaviors • Sustainability • Future Work

  8. Robots

  9. Colony Robot BOM Dragonfly Board Bearing and Orientation Module (BOM) – robot localization. ORBs Motors Microcontroller Range-Finders Tri-color LED x 2 Diff-drive robot. Obstacle avoidance

  10. Colony Robot BOM Dragonfly Board Program robotUser I/O ORBs Motors Range-Finders Enables robot recharging USB Charging Contacts

  11. Microcontroller • ATMega 128 • 8MHz max • 128Kbytes program memory • Programmed in C • arv-libc, avr-gcc • open-source, multi-platform tools

  12. Sensors

  13. Sensors • Standard off-the-shelf sensors • Sharp IR Rangefinder • Bump Sensors • Photoresistors • Pyroelectric sensor (heat) Previously used • Custom Sensor • Bearing and Orientation Module (BOM)

  14. Bearing and Orientation Module • IR emitter/detector ring • Emitter mode • All emitters are powered simultaneously (beacon) • Detector mode • Detectors can be polled individually for analog intensity readings

  15. Bearing and Orientation Module • IR emissions from one robot are highly visible to all robots within line of sight • All BOMs are coplanar across the colony • Most excited detector is pointing in the direction of the emitting robot

  16. InfrastructureWireless Communication, Localization

  17. Communication Network • ZigBee wireless protocol • XBee module (MaxStream) • 30m indoor / 100m outdoor range • Network features • Ad-hoc • Distributed • Fault-tolerant • Issues to consider • Packet collisions • No threading on robot • Very low bandwidth

  18. Network Topology • Problem: Packet collisions Token-Ring Network Fully-Connected Network

  19. Network Topology • Solution: Robots take turns, yet communicate with all other robots Leverage wireless network and BOM to perform communication and localization simultaneously

  20. Wireless Network • Integrate BOM and Wireless • Robots beacon BOM when sending a wireless packet • When receiving a packet, poll BOM for direction of sender robot • Propagate connectivity matrix “Token” path “Token” path Wireless Data

  21. Robot 0 Robot 1 Robot 2 Robot 0 Robot 1 Robot 2 Connectivity/Bearing Matrix You share your data 1 0 2 you And you receive these rows

  22. Topological Localization • Advantages • Simple • Fast • No processing (use sensor data directly) • Metric maps can be extracted: • “Relative Localization in Colony Robots,” in Proceedings of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, 2005

  23. Robot Behaviors

  24. Behaviors • Use sensor data to control actions • Simple local interactions can yield complex global actions • Emergent behavior • Individual and multiple robot behaviors: Individual Robot • Light-seeking • Feeding/Hunger • Roaming • Obstacle Avoidance • Homing Multiple Robots • Lemmings • Robots follow a leader in a chain • Hunter/Prey (Tag) • One prey, many hunters • Robots can switch roles

  25. Roaming/Obstacle Avoidance • Robots uses Sharp IR rangefinder to avoid obstacles • Behavior can be reproduced on many robots

  26. Marching band • Each robot programmed with own music sequence and dance moves • Wireless used for synchronization between robots

  27. Lemmings (multi-robot) • Simple follow the leader • Uses both the BOM and wireless network (localization)

  28. Simulation • Player/Stage • Simulate larger number of robots • Eases behavior development • Additions to simulate the BOM

  29. Lemmings (simulation)

  30. Hunter/Prey (simulation)

  31. Formation Control (simulator)

  32. Cooperative Maze Solving • Given a maze and a goal, robots cooperate to seek the goal Start

  33. Cooperative Maze Solving • Given a maze and a goal, robots cooperate to seek the goal Cooperation

  34. Cooperative Maze Solving • Given a maze and a goal, robots cooperate to seek the goal Goal

  35. Cooperative Maze Solving • Warning: Early Colony videos ahead

  36. Cooperative Maze Solving Cooperative Maze Solving

  37. Cooperative Maze Solving (night vision)

  38. Autonomous Recharging

  39. Towards Self-Sustainability • Goal is to develop a self-sustainable robot colony • Operate unassisted for long periods of time • Requirements • Autonomous recharging • Task allocation

  40. Bay Bay Bay Bay Bay Bay Charging Station Controller Power … • One controller oversees up to 8 bays • Power supply powers bays and charges robots • Wireless communication to talk to colony

  41. Charging Bay Pair

  42. Charging Bay Pair

  43. Charging Station • Controller • Salvaged robot controller with XBee module • Acts as robot manager • Bay allocation • Scheduling • Bays • 12V supply • Linear BOM • Homing beacon

  44. Robot charging • Charge board • Charges batteries • Communicates with robot over I2C • Homing sensor • Leverage wireless and BOM localization

  45. IR Beacon Homing Beacon Max pulse width n 3n 2n Left Center Right

  46. Docking with Bay – Procedure • Request charge bay, wait for accept • Locate bay, get to homing range • Home to docking bay • Dock Wireless BOM/Wireless Homing Sensor Robot

  47. Docking Video

  48. Incorporating a Task • Roaming Button press instead of battery threshold in the interest of time

  49. Future Work • More complex tasks • Extended duration • Larger scale cooperation problems • Robustness

  50. Felix Duvallet Christopher Mar Austin Buchan Brian Coltin Brad Neuman Justin Scheiner Siyuan Feng Duncan Alexander Cornell Wright Eugene Marinelli Suresh Nidhiry Andrew Yeager Greg Tress James Kong Kevin Woo Ben Berkowitz Jason Knichel Aaron Johnson Prof. George Kantor Colony Members

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