On the implementation of a robotic SWARM testbed

This paper presents the development of a robotic testbed for investigating the formation control algorithms. The design of this testbed aims for enhancing the sensing capability of the robotic agents, overcoming the constraints led by lack of communications among robots and accustoming itself to various formation control simulations. The proposed design schema utilizes an overhead camera to localize the agents, 3 E-puck robots and one computer as the simulation platform and console to generate commands for controlling the robots and recording the experimental data. Throughout this project, the simulations in Matlab and the agents on testbed could run at the same time, besides, the location data of agents would be recorded and drawn as a stop motion figure in Matlab for further analysis and study. Several basic tasks, such as triangular formation flocking and moving, and formation centre preserving, are implemented using the testbed.