Spider Bots: A Low Cost Platform for Testing and Validating Cooperative Control Algorithms

A primary factor limiting the development, testing, and validation of decentralized algorithms for large-scale multi-robot teams is the high cost of the available systems. When a successful test necessitates that an algorithm functions on dozens or even hundreds of robots simultaneously, a low price tag on each robot is crucial. This paper presents Spider-Bots, a low cost platform for testing and validating control algorithms for multi-robot swarms. The platform is comprised of centimeter-scale mobile robots that can communicate wirelessly and interact with their environment, along with easy to use software libraries. The resulting platform was validated by testing its ability to execute and record data from three separate algorithms: Set-point navigation, object manipulation, and collision avoidance.