Mroberto: A Modular Millirobot For Swarm-Behavior Studies

Millirobots have increasingly become popular over the past several years, especially for swarm-behavior studies, allowing researchers to run experiments with a large number of units in limited workspaces. However, as these robots have become smaller in size, their sensory capabilities and battery life have been reduced. A number of these have also been customized, with few off-the shelf components, exhibiting integral (i.e., non-modular) designs. In response to the above concerns, this paper presents a novel open-source millirobot with a modular design based on the use of easily sourced elements and off-the-shelf components. The proposed milli-robot-Toronto (mROBerTO), is a 16x16 mm(2) robot with a variety of sensors (including proximity, IMU, compass, ambient light, and camera). mROBerTO is capable of formation control using an IR emitter and detector add-on. It can also communicate via Bluetooth Smart, ANT+, or both concurrently. It is equipped with an ARM processor for handling complex tasks and has a flash memory of 256 KB with over-the-air programming capability.