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Swarm robotics, inspired by the collective behavior of social organisms, offers a unique avenue for creating dynamic and interactive art installations.
Swarm of Robots
This project seeks to develop an application of swarm robotics by creating a swarm of robots that can autonomously arrange themselves to replicate drawings made by a user. The proposed system leverages swarm intelligence to translate artistic expressions into a visually stunning and collaborative robotic display.
ROS 2 (Robot Operating System 2) is the next-generation open-source robotics middleware framework that builds upon the success of the original ROS. It introduces significant improvements, including support for multiple programming languages, a more robust communication layer based on the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, enhanced real-time performance, built-in security features, better support for multi-robot systems and distributed systems, Quality of Service (QoS) policies for reliable communication, improved lifecycle management for nodes, and increased interoperability with other robotics frameworks. ROS 2 also introduces a new Robot Description Format (RDF) for describing robot models and provides tools for maintaining backward compatibility with existing ROS packages, enabling a smoother transition for developers.
- Nodes: A node is an executable that uses ROS 2 to communicate with other nodes. A ROS 2 Node can be a Publisher or a Subscriber. A Publisher puts the messages of a standard message type to a particular topic. The Subscriber, on the other hand, subscribes to the topic and receives the messages that are published to the topic.
- Messages: ROS 2 data type used upon subscribing or publishing to a topic.
- Topics: Nodes can publish messages to a topic as well as subscribe to a topic to receive messages.
Client libraries needed for this project:
- rclpy: Python client library
- rclcpp: C++ client library
Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured, object-oriented, and functional programming.
Swarm robotics is an approach to coordinate multiple robots as a single system to achieve a particular goal. It is inspired by the emergent behavior observed in social insects.
- Ubuntu 22.04
- ROS 2 Iron
For installing ROS 2 refer to ROS 2 Wiki
Create a colcon workspace
mkdir ros_ws
cd ros_ws
mkdir src
colcon buildTo automatically source this workspace every time a new shell is launched, run these commands
echo "source <path-to-workspace>/install/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrcClone the repository in the src folder in the catkin workspace.
cd ~/ros_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/IEEE-NITK/ARTBotNavigate back to the workspace folder and build the packages.
cd ~/ros_ws
colcon buildTo launch the ARTBot simulation use the command
ros2 launch artbotsim artbotsim.launch.py
ARTBot Simulation
To move each of the robot around, we will use teleop_twist_keyboard which is a package for moving the robot using the keyboard:
ros2 run teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard --ros-args --remap cmd_vel:=/<bot_name>/cmd_velThe algorithm operates within a simulation environment where only the current position and orientation of the bots are sensed in real-time.
The algorithm involves a swarm of robotic agents, each equipped to navigate and coordinate with its peers autonomously. The swarm is divided into two groups:
- The target-seeking bots are assigned specific targets or coordinates to move towards, simulating the behavior of birds homing in on particular locations within a flock.
- The integrating bots dynamically position themselves between pairs of "parent bots," facilitating cohesion and formation maintenance within the swarm.
Each "child bot" is assigned specific "parent bots," between which it positions itself. This arrangement ensures that the "child bots" contribute to the overall shape formation by maintaining optimal spacing and alignment within the swarm.
Boids Algorithm
Boids is an artificial life program that produces startlingly realistic simulations of flocking behavior. Each "boid" (which is an abbreviation of "bird-oid object") follows a very simple set of rules. These rules can be summarized as follows:
- Separation: boids move away from other boids that are too close
- Alignment: boids attempt to match the velocities of their neighbors
- Cohesion: boids move toward the center of mass of their neighbors
This project has tried to use this algorithm but it is yet to be properly developed
The user interface for the project (the canvas) is made using a simple python3 script that uses opencv.
The drawing is made by handling mouse clicks and mouse movement events which can be done using the mouse event handling feature of opencv.
To process and transfer the image from the canvas to the artbot simulation, the user just needs to use the right mouse button. Once the right mouse button is pressed, targets are assigned in an equi distant manner for the drawing and is trnsferred to the bots.
The project uses a customized turtlesim environment that is built on Qt (a cross-platform software for creating GUI).
Here is a video of one of the runs.
ARTBot.Demo.mp4
This repository is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause License