Artificial Life: Self-Organization and Cooperation of Small Mobile Robots

Research is done here on the self-organization and cooperation of mobile robots of the Pioneer 1 type by ActiveMedia Inc., resp. Real World Interface (RWI).

In the practical training course "Mobile Robots" given in the winter semester 96/97 at the university of Tuebingen 5 of those small robots were used so that each student team was able to experiment with its own robot.

Our Pioneers are equipped with a microcontroller MC68HC11 as onboard computer and communicate via radio modems with stationary PCs which run the control software and perform planning and visualization.

As sensors all robots use 7 sonars (ultrasonic sensors), one on each side and 5 on the front panel, each with an angular offset of 15 degrees from its neighbour.

One of the robots is equipped with a fast track vision system by Newton Labs, Inc. which is available as optional accessory to the Pioneers by ActivMedia.

The first field of research are algorithms for a cooperative exploration of the environment:

Another matter of interest are the methods which the small robots use to coordinate their movements, e.g. for driving in a queue. These algorithms may be fully based on self-organizing principles or may have a central control.