A Test-Environment for Control Schemes in the Field of Collaborative Robots and Swarm Intelligence

This paper presents an architecture for a testenvironment for algorithms and control schemes in the field of collaborative robotics and swarm intelligence. As the foundation of the testenvironment, small bionically inspired robots are presented. The robots are small (20 cm x 5 cm x 5 cm) and lightweight (< 200 g). Their design is inspired by the movement of caterpillars. Three cubical segments are connected via special joints, where each of these joints has three independent degrees of translatory freedom. Thus, the robots are able to handle rough terrain with small obstacles. The robots are driven by innovative piezoelectric motors that allow a gearless design without any rotary parts. Each robot is equipped with on-board processing and radio communication. The software of the robots is written using TinyOS, an eventdriven operating system for large-scale distributed sensor-actuator-networks.