Minirobots and Cellular Robots

Minirobots at LIRA-Lab

This project is a part of the current activity on Cellular Robotics at LIRA Lab. A board has been designed and implemented with the aim of detecting the direction of an infrared transmission and estimating the distance among robotic units. The board uses 2 sets of 8 infrared photodiodes placed on a cylindrical unit. In addition, we have studied cooperative behaviors using this information. At the same time, we have developed a software simulator for studying cooperation strategies in the presence of a gas gradient caused by a gas leak. It is possible to vary several parameters of the robots as well as the environment, such as number of units, communication range, gas loss speed and quantity.

Reports and Articles

• Cellular Robotics: Simulation and HW Implementation, G. Lucarini M. Varoli, R. Cerutti and G. Sandini, IEEE Conf. Robotics & Automation (Tsuchura, Japan, May 1993)
• Gradient Driven Self-Organizing Systems, G. Sandini, G. Lucarini, M. Varoli , Int. Conf. Intelligent Robots and Systems '93 (Atlanta, Georgia, July 1993)
• A Reinforcement Supervised Navigation Neural Net, G. Lucarini, P.Morasso, M. Varoli , Italian Workshop on Neural Networks (Vietri sul Mare, Italy, April 1993)

The Team: Luciano Buscemi, Riccardo Cerutti, Giovanni Lucarini, Marco Prati, Giulio Sandini , Marco Varoli

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