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Sbot Mobile RobotThe s-bot is a small (15 cm) mobile robot developed at the ASL at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland between 2001 and 2004. Targeted to swarm robotics, a field of artificial intelligence, it was developed within the Swarm-bots project, a Future and Emerging Technologies project coordinated by Prof. Marco Dorigo. Built by a small team of engineers (Francesco Mondada, Andr Guignard, Michael Bonani and Stphane Magnenat) of the group of Prof. Dario Floreano and with the help of student projects, it is considered at the time of completion as one of the most complex and featured robots ever for its size. Purpose and use of the s-bot This is a research robot, aimed at studying team work and inter-robot communication. To do this, the s-bots have several special abilities: - Using their gripper (red in the photos), they can connect together. Then they can, for instance, pass over gap and steps where a single robot would have failed.
- Using their integrated force sensor, they can coordinate to retrieve an object to a certain location without the use of explicit communication. This is the way ants do to bring preys to nest.
Of course, all other sensors and actuators, also found on other robots, can be used to do team work such as food foraging. Technical details General - 12 cm diameter
- 15 cm height
- 660 g
- 2 LiIon batteries
- 1 hour autonomy moving
Control - 400 MHz custom XScale CPU board, 64 MB of RAM, 32 MB of flash
- 12 distributed PIC CPU for low-level handling
- Custom Linux port running Familiar
- Wifi
Actuators - 2 treels
- turret rotation
- rigid gripper elevation
- rigid gripper
- 3 axis side arm
- side arm gripper
Sensors - 15 infrared sensors around the turret
- 4 infrared sensors below the robot
- position sensors on all degrees of freedom except gripper
- force and speed sensors on all major degrees of freedom
- 2 humiditiy sensors
- 2 temperature sensors
- 8 ambient light sensors around the turret
- 4 accelerometers, which allow 3D orientation
- 1 640x480 camera sensor. Custom optic based on spherical mirror provides omnidirectional vision
- 4 microphones
- 2 axis structure deformation sensors
- optical barrier in grippers
LEDS - 8 x RGB LEDS around the turret
- red leds in grippers
Special abilities S-bots can connect to other s-bots to create a bigger structure known as the swarm-bot. To do so, they attach together using their rigid gripper and ring. An s-bot has sufficient force to lift another one. Integrated software The s-bot features a custom Linux port running the Familiar GNU/Linux distribution. All sensors and actuators are easily accessible through a simple C API. External links References - Mondada, F., Guignard, A., Bonani, M., Br, D., Lauria, M. and Floreano, D. (2003) SWARM-BOT: From Concept to Implementation. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2003, IEEE Press. pp. 1626-1631. PDF BibTeX
- Mondada, F., Pettinaro, G. C., Guignard, A., Kwee, I., Floreano, D., Deneubourg, J.-L., Nolfi, S. and Gambardella, L.M., Dorigo, M. (2004) SWARM-BOT: a New Distributed Robotic Concept. Autonomous Robots, special Issue on Swarm Robotics, Volume 17, Issue 2-3, September - November 2004, Pages 193 - 221. BibTeX
- Marco Dorigo, V. Trianni, E. Sahin, T. H. Labella, R. Gross, G. Baldassarre, S. Nolfi, J.-L. Deneubourg, F. Mondada, D. Floreano & L. M. Gambardella (2004). Evolving Self-Organizing Behaviors for a Swarm-bot. Autonomous Robots, 17 (23): 223245. BibTex
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