Video demonstrating the formation of shapes
After winning the e-Yantra robotics competition, Srijal and myself were offered the coveted 7-week internship at IIT-Bombay.
I was assigned to work on the project “Formation Control of Multiple Swarm Robots” along with my partner Om who was studying in Chandigarh University.
Project Objective: To control multiple Spark V robots simultaneously to form any desired shapes. The shapes can be predefined: like the shapes of letters or can be drawn on the screen.
Solution: We used an overhead camera for obtaining the position of the robots. The robots are controlled using a python script running on a laptop. OpenCV libraries are used along with python for the detection of ArUco markers which are placed on the robots using which we obtain the position and orientation of each robot.
XBee radio modules are used for the communication between the laptop and the robots. The laptop sends the robot’s position and orientation to the robot along with its desired position. The robot then moves towards the required position using a Go-to-Goal PID controller running on the robot. Thus multiple robots are directed to the required positions to form the desired shape.
Experience:
The internship was truly a phenomenal experience. I got to meet some amazing people, work on a really unique project and best of all: have the experience of living in IIT-B for 7 weeks.
Video demonstrating the formation of letters