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A Hardware Architecture and Physical Prototype for General-Purpose Swarm Minirobotics: Proteus II

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Applied Optimization and Swarm Intelligence

Part of the book series: Springer Tracts in Nature-Inspired Computing ((STNIC))

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Abstract

Swarm intelligence is a branch of artificial intelligence focused on the collective behavior of decentralized and self-organized systems composed of relatively simple agents interacting locally with one another and with the environment. It takes its inspiration from the surprising collective behavior of colonies of several social insects (ants, fireflies, bees, wasps) and other groups of animals (fish schooling, animal herding, bird flocking, hawks hunting, and others). These groups exhibit sophisticated behavioral patterns and are able to accomplish collectively very difficult tasks unattainable for single individuals. These ideas can also be applied to the coordinated behavior of a swarm of simple, decentralized self-organized robots, an exciting field known as swarm robotics. In this chapter, we are particularly interested in the case of minirobots, robotic units with characteristic dimensions less than 10 cm (4 inches). An important issue in this regard is the definition of suitable hardware architectures for the minirobotic swarm since this size limitation imposes strong constraints on the different components (electronic, mechanical, etc.) of the minirobot. This chapter describes a hardware solution developed by the authors for a general-purpose robotic prototype particularly tailored for swarm minirobotics: Proteus II, an evolution of the previous Proteus I prototype. The chapter discusses the hardware architecture, its components, the main features and advantages of this new robotic prototype, and its potential applicability to swarm minirobotics.

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Acknowledgements

This research work has received funding from the project PDE-GIR of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 778035, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Computer Science National Program) under grant #TIN2017-89275-R of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación and European Funds FEDER (AEI/FEDER, UE), and the project #JU12, supported by public body SODERCAN and European Funds FEDER (SODERCAN/FEDER UE). We are also thankful to the authors of [28] for providing us with a preliminary version of their chapter in this book during the writing of this one.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences, University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain

    Nureddin Moustafa, Andrés Iglesias & Akemi Gálvez

  2. Department of Information Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, Toho University, Funabashi, Japan

    Andrés Iglesias & Akemi Gálvez

Authors
  1. Nureddin Moustafa
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  2. Andrés Iglesias
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  3. Akemi Gálvez
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Correspondence to Andrés Iglesias .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tecnalia Research and Innovation, BRTA (Basque Research and Technology Alliance), Derio, Spain

    Eneko Osaba

  2. Department of Design Engineering and Mathematics, School of Science and Technology, Middlesex University, London, UK

    Xin-She Yang

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Moustafa, N., Iglesias, A., Gálvez, A. (2021). A Hardware Architecture and Physical Prototype for General-Purpose Swarm Minirobotics: Proteus II. In: Osaba, E., Yang, XS. (eds) Applied Optimization and Swarm Intelligence. Springer Tracts in Nature-Inspired Computing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0662-5_8

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