Beeclust-Multi Robot Systems

Beeclust Lab is a multi robot research group based in SRM University, Chennai, India. The primary focus of the team is Swarm Robotics and Swarm Intelligence. Currently, the Lab is working to develop mobile printing solutions or swarm printing using Swarm Intelligence and the team is involved in designing circuits, fabricating PCBs and 3D printing.The team has also developed algorithms to coordinate multiple robots and perform tasks collectively.

The research group is also developing a Hi-Tech Micro mouse for the annually held APEC World Micro mouse Championship (http://www.apec-conf.org/conference) and will see participation in the forthcoming years.

The research revolves around the development of multi robot system of miniature robots, each capable of individually printing the given image by sensing the environment and hence printing any given document onto a sheet of paper. Their swarm behavior comes into picture when a base station is used to establish network communication amongst them. This behavior can be exploited using an optical tracking system to deploy multiple robots towards a single user assigned task of printing a document. A web based graphical user interface is proposed, which would be a mediator between the user and the entire system. Using this technology, a user would be able to print documents on the go, without the hassle associated with modern desktop printers. The research not only would make printing mobile but also intelligent.

The most integral part of this research would be the optical tracking system. This would require a high-speed DLP projector (Like DLP Lightcrafter 4500 from Texas Instruments). The principle behind the entire system is decoding a pair of G-codes to determine the corresponding coordinate location on the printing surface. A sequence of bitmap images would be designed with each bit representing a G-code. The sequence would then be

projected at a very high frequency on the printing surface. Photodetectors embedded on each robot would decode this G-code bit sequence projected at their corresponding position, and send data to the base station, which would hence determine its present location with

respect to the printing surface. This entire algorithm would consist the optical tracking technology. A combination of multiple errors coded sequences would be tested for highest efficiency and optimum path planning.

The team comprises of students from multiple disciplines working together to accomplish the goal. Comprising of students, the team has enthusiasm, ideas, and capability and we are partially being funded by the Institute to carry on with the projects and we plan on contributing more towards the society for which we need your sponsorship and guidance for our projects. Our project uses electronic devices and solutions for societal applications and your sponsorship can be a huge lift for us to move ahead in return we will give our best to advertise and publicize the name PCBWay around us. We have been using your components in our projects and we will be doing the same in future.