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Swarm Roboticsat the

University of WyomingDr. William M. Spears

Dr. Diana F. SpearsComputer Science Department

University of Wyoming

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Traditional Robotics

Traditionally, roboticsresearchers focus on thedevelopment of highly

capable and expensive robots.Only a few are made.

Predator airplanes

With swarm robotics, the

emphasis is on having lots ofrelatively inexpensive robots.

Micro-air vehicles

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Advantages

Swarms of robots are effective:

They can perform tasks that one expensive

robot cannot.

Swarms are robust:

Even if some robots fail, the swarm can still

achieve the task.

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Goal

The UW Distributed Robotics Laboratory

serves as an environment for prototyping

and demonstration of proof-of-principle forswarm robotics.

Our goal is to design methods for enabling

groups of robots to perform important real-world tasks

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Tasks

Search and Rescue

Surveillance

Convoy / Formation MovementOrganizing into a Formation

Movement Toward a Goal

Avoiding Obstacles

Chemical Plume Source Tracing

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Search and Rescue Project

Graduate Student:

Wesley Kerr

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Search and Rescue Simulation

Task: Robotsmust avoid

obstacles and

each other while

reaching therescue area.

Rescue Area

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Surveillance Project

Funded by Defense Advanced

Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Graduate Students:

Wesley Kerr

Suranga HettiarachchiDimitri Zarzhitsky

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Scenario: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Cooperate To Detect Targets

Terrain detector

Target detector

UAV UAV UAV

http://search.coolclips.com/coolclips/display.asp?D=vc038604http://search.coolclips.com/coolclips/display.asp?D=vc038604http://search.coolclips.com/coolclips/display.asp?D=vc038604

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Surveillance Simulation

UAVs forest

Task: UAVs must detectas many of the moving

targets as possible, while

avoiding each other.

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Convoy / FormationMovement Project

Graduate Student:

Suranga Hettiarachchi

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Formation Organization

Task 1: Robots mustorganize themselves into

formation.

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Formation MovementTask 2: Robots must

organize themselves into

formation and then move

toward a light source.

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Formation Movement Simulation

Task 3: Robots

must organize

themselves into

formation and

then move

toward a goal,

while avoiding

obstacles.

goal

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Chemical Plume Tracing Project

Portions of this work to be funded by theJoint Robotics Program.

Testing to take place at Camp Guernsey.

Graduate Student:

Dimitri Zarzhitsky

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Plume Tracing SimulationRobots must organize themselves into a

formation, and then locate the source of achemical hazard, while avoiding obstacles.

source

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Plume Tracing Experiments

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Ultrasonic Localization forSwarms of Robots

Portions of this work to be funded by theJoint Robotics Program.

Testing to take place at Camp Guernsey.

Graduate Students:

Paul Maxim

Thomas Kunkel

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Hardware implementation

Swarm robottechnology equippedwith a localization

system

Use trilateration

method for localpositioning system

Robot prototype

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Project Participants FACULTY

Jerry Hamann, Cameron Wright (Electrical and Computer Engineering)

M. P. Sharma (Chemical Engineering) John Schabron (Chemist, Western Research Institute)

Dave Walrath, Doug Smith, Dimitri Mavriplis (Mechanical Engineering)

Dan Stanescu (Mathematics)

David Thayer (Physics and Astronomy)

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Rodney Heil

Suranga Hettiarachchi Wesley Kerr

Lee Frey

Thomas Kunkel

Paul Maxim

Mark Patterson

Yi Shi

Dimitri Zarzhitsky

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Paul Hansen

Kurt Lawton

Ben Palmer

David Weiser

Ella Wellman

Brian Zuelke

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Questions

and

Robot Demonstration