• University and High school level robotics courses

• Researchers who need a modular and affordable system to experiment with robotic swarms

• Robotic hobbyists and enthusiasts

Objective

• The advent of 3D printing and machine learning has provided the groundwork for developing modular robotic swarms. As such, we hope to create a framework for robotic swarms that will allow new robots to easily join a swarm with the swarm automatically adapting to its new member count. This would allow for swarms to be more flexible in their workloads along with being able to efficiently work with other swarms.

Impacts:

Global

• Hive-mind/swarm robotics is becoming more important for companies looking to automate processes  

• More exploration tasks are looking toward swarm robotics to more efficiently gather data

Economic

• Free open source software (FOSS) is free to use and download

• CAD files will be open sourced so anyone can 3d print the parts

• Plastics are cheaper to manufacture than metal

• Developing a swarm ecosystem will already be done, so researchers can immediately start adding onto the project rather than developing everything from scratch

Environmental

• By designing a modular 3D-printable chassis for our swarm robots, parts can be made of biodegradable plastics 

Societal

• By providing an open source and easy-to-access method of learning and experimenting with swarm robotics, more hobbyists and schools will be able to understand and apply swarm robotics and allowing for a greater societal appreciation for their possibilities.

• This project shall consist of a system of multiple small robots

• There shall be a system in place to control those robots to form certain shapes or complete specific tasks

• The robots and system shall be modular during operation so the existing robots can easily accommodate new robots into a routine

• The robots and system shall be able to adjust their new routine to most efficiently utilize the amount of robots present

• The system shall be able to accommodate the loss of a robot without interrupting its routine

• The system shall be created with low cost materials available to most students and schools

• The system shall be released as open source code along with any 3D printer files for ease of access to other students