Minimalistic approach towards communication and perception in microrobotic swarms

Abstract

This work is primarily devoted to specific communication and sensing approaches applied for large microrobotic swarms. We investigate the minimal capabilities of a microrobot which still enable the whole robotic group to perform collective activities. These minimal capabilities are implemented in the hardware which allows exploring a phenomenon of swarm intelligence in real experiments. The components of the developed system consume energy provided by microcontroller's I/O ports, are cheap and available on micro-component market.