Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept

FRANCESCO MONDADA, GIOVANNI C. PETTINARO, ANDRE GUIGNARD, IVO W.

KWEE, DARIO FLOREANO, JEAN-LOUIS DENEUBOURG, STEFANO NOLFI, LUCA
MARIA GAMBARDELLA AND MARCO DORIGO
Autonomous Systems Lab (LSA), EPFL-STI-I2S, Lausanne, Switzerland
francesco.mondada@epfl.ch
andre.guignard@epfl.ch
dario.floreano@epfl.ch
Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale (IDSIA), USI/SUPSI, Manno (Lugano), Switzerland
giovanni@idsia.ch
ivo@idsia.ch
luca@idsia.ch
Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems (CENOLI) - Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
jldeneub@ulb.ac.be
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies - CNR, Roma, Italy
nolfi@www.ip.rm.cnr.it
Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Développements en Intelligence Artificielle (IRIDIA) - Université
Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
mdorigo@ulb.ac.be

Abstract. The swarm intelligence paradigm has proven to have very interesting properties such as robustness,
flexibility and ability to solve complex problems exploiting parallelism and self-organization. Several robotics
implementations of this paradigm confirm that these properties can be exploited for the control of a population
of physically independent mobile robots.
The work presented here introduces a new robotic concept called swarm-bot in which the collective interaction
exploited by the swarm intelligence mechanism goes beyond the control layer and is extended to the physical level.
This implies the addition of new mechanical functionalities on the single robot, together with new electronics and
software to manage it. These new functionalities, even if not directly related to mobility and navigation, allow to
address complex mobile robotics problems, such as extreme all-terrain exploration.
The work shows also how this new concept is investigated using a simulation tool (swarmbot3d) specifically de-
veloped for quickly designing and evaluating new control algorithms. Experimental work shows how the simulated
detailed representation of one s-bot has been calibrated to match the behaviour of the real robot.

Keywords: Swarm Intelligence, Swarm Robotics, Distributed Robotics, Reconfigurable Robotics, Collective
Robotics, Physics-Based Simulation.

1. Introduction

Applications like semi-automatic space exploration (Visentin et al., 2001), rescue (Casper et al.,
2000), or underwater exploration (Ayers et al., 1998) need robust and flexible robotic systems.
Most of these applications require systems combining the following three basic characteristics:

Robustness. Unstable, very complex or extreme environments require robustness to severe

hardware failures.

c 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

swarmbot-hardware.tex; p.1
2 Mondada et al.

Versatility. The complexity of the task needs versatility in hardware shape and functionality.
The robot has to perform well in very different terrains and in very different tasks such as
displacement, exploration or object transportation.

All Terrain Navigation. Complex unstructured environments such as distant planets or ca-
tastrophic environments need a very flexible and efficient all-terrain navigation.

The SWARM-BOTS project1 aims at combining swarm intelligence (Bonabeau et al., 1999)
and physical self-assembling features to provide the above mentioned characteristics to a group
of 35 robots.
The swarm-bot robot concept, as well as the hardware implementation, have been developed in
parallel to a simulator. This last is intended to provide the following supporting functionalities:

− the accurate prediction of both kinematics and dynamics of a swarm-bot in 3D;

− the evaluation of hardware design options for different components;

− the design of swarm-bot experiments in 3D worlds; and

− the efficient investigation of different distributed control algorithms.

The work presented here reports the hardware and software development carried out from
October 2001. It is expected that a group of 35 real robots are going to be available by the
Fall of 2004. Currently, two single robot prototypes are available. Preliminary control tests on a
group of more than two robots (see the companion paper in this issue (Dorigo et al., 2004)) are
for the moment possible only within the simulation environment (swarmbot3d).
The next section presents the swarm-bot concept in more details and places it into its research
context (Section 2). The physical hardware implementation of a swarm-bot component (s-bot)
is illustrated in Section 3. The swarmbot3d simulation environment is discussed in Section 4.
Section 5 is dedicated to the experimental comparison between simulated and real s-bots while
final conclusions are drawn in Section 6.

2. Concept and Related Work

The objective of the SWARM-BOTS project is to study a novel approach to the design, hardware
implementation, test, and use of a self-assembling, self-organizing, metamorphic robotic system
called swarm-bot. This approach finds its theoretical roots in recent studies in the field of swarm
intelligence, that is, in studies exploiting the self-organizing and self-assembling capabilities
shown by social insects and by some other animal societies (Bonabeau et al., 1999).
An important part of the project consists in the physical construction of at least one swarm-
bot, that is, a self-assembling and self-organizing robot colony composed of a number (30-35) of
smaller devices, called s-bots (Figure 1). Each s-bot is a fully autonomous mobile robot capable
of performing basic tasks such as autonomous navigation, perception of the environment and
1
Swarm-Bots is a European IST-FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) project, grant IST-2000-31010, for
more details see http://www.swarm-bots.org .
 3

Figure 1. A graphic visualization of the s-bot concept. The main body (turret) is equipped with passive and active
gripping facilities, sensors and electronics. The lower body (traction system) is equipped with tracks and it hosts
the batteries. The diameter of the main body is 116 mm.

grasping of objects. In addition to these features, one s-bot is able to communicate with other
s-bots and physically connect to them in flexible ways, thus forming a so-called swarm-bot.
Such a robotic entity is able to perform tasks in which a single s-bot has major problems,
such as exploration, navigation, and transportation of heavy objects on very rough terrain (see
Figure 2 for an example). This hardware structure is combined with a distributed adaptive
control architecture loosely inspired upon ant colony behaviors (Dorigo et al., 2004).
The final goal of the SWARM-BOTS project is illustrated by a scenario describing the type of
operation that this novel robotic concept aims at achieving. This scenario consists in transporting
a very heavy object from its initial location to a target defined by a light. The light cannot be
seen from the area where the object is initially placed and there are several possible paths for the
transport. These paths have different lengths and include large obstacles and holes. The scenario
itself is split in four stages. During the first stage a group of s-bots searches for a heavy object,

Figure 2. Graphic visualization of how the rigid gripper can be used to connect in a secure way s-bots among
themselves so to form chains for overcoming large obstacles or holes.
4 Mondada et al.

grasps it and starts moving it in a collective way. In parallel, another group of s-bots disperses
in the environment to search for the goal. In the second phase the s-bots create a path linking
initial and goal positions for the object. In the third and fourth phases, the s-bots transporting
the object have to move over a hole and through a narrow passageway by reconfiguring their
position around the object.
This scenario emphasizes several key features of the swarm-bot concept, and particularly the
three aspects mentioned in the introduction (Section 1), that is, robustness, versatility, and rough
terrain navigation. This concept would therefore be well adapted for exploration in extreme rough
terrain. The collective robustness and the self-assembling versatility can be used to climb obsta-
cles and transport objects also in situations where a single robot acting alone could not succeed.
This gives a swarm-bot a clear advantage over existing collective robotic systems in rough terrain
conditions. Additionally, distributed hardware and control provide strong robustness to failures,
which is an advantage over both classic rovers and self-reconfigurable robots, that often have
a centralized control (Kamimura et al., 2001; Yim et al., 2002). Even if a swarm-bot concept
cannot be used to form complex 3D structures, it fits well rough terrain situations and can
perform well in search tasks where dynamic assembly and disbanding are required.
In the next sections the details of the swarm-bot concept are presented within the research con-
text of exploration in rough terrain conditions. The description is structured following the three
main features needed by this type of robots: robustness (Section 2.1), versatility (Section 2.2),
and rough terrain navigation (Section 2.3). In each section, a comparison is drawn between the
swarm-bot concept and the related state-of-the-art robots.

2.1. Robustness to Hardware Failures

The problem of robustness to physical damages plays a crucial role in unstructured and unstable
environments, such as those found in post-catastrophic situations or space exploration. Large
obstacles, holes in the ground, unstable hindrance, fire, explosions, water, chemicals or other
dangerous agents can cause damages to a robotic system. In order to ensure the most efficient
task execution, a system has to be fault tolerant and ensure operation even if a large part of it,
such as half of the hardware, is lost.

2.1.1. State of the Art. A widely used technique to overcome hardware failures is redun-
dancy. Most of the literature on fault tolerant systems deals with minor failures that can be
corrected with a robust control or with systems which have intrinsic redundancy, like distributed
communication networks. A typical example exploiting intrinsic redundancy is the failure of a
node in a communication network. In this case the system, if well controlled, can continue to
operate using the remaining working parts. To face this type of partial failure, which is the most
common in engineering systems, the main design effort has to be placed in the control part of
the system (Stengel, 1991). An efficient fault tolerant control is based on failure detection and
correction. Both of them need a major design effort and an accurate model of the system. To
correct major failures, additional and specific hardware redundancy becomes necessary.
In case of exploration in extreme environments, hardware failures can be frequent and major.
Here robust control is not anymore sufficient and redundancy has to be introduced also at the
hardware level, building in this way multi-robot systems.
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 5

Most of the research done in this direction is known under the name of collective robotics and
represents a very active field. An overview can be found for instance in a survey by Parker et
al. (Parker et al., 2000). A major focus of this research community is distributed control, and
there is little research on exploiting the collective self-organization at the hardware level. The
main motivation of collective robotics research is the coordination of several systems (Gerkey
and Matarić, 2002; Agassounon et al., 2001; Melhuish, 1999; Flocchini et al., 2000) and the
robustness that can be achieved by the redundancy of the whole system (Parker, 1998; Goldberg
and Matarić, 2002; Fukuda et al., 1999). An increasing number of applications, such as space
robotic missions (Chien et al., 2000; Earon et al., 2001) where there is a strong advantage in
obtaining a more robust system, plan to exploit this type of information processing.
Hardware modularity and redundancy can also be found in the field of self-reconfigurable
robots. There the research activity is complementary to that of collective robotics and is mainly
focussed on hardware modularity with relatively little research on autonomous perception and
action in the environment.
Pioneering examples of self-reconfigurable robots are MTRAN (Kamimura et al., 2001) and
PolyBot (Duff et al., 2001). An overview of existing systems and characteristics can be found
in the work of Kamimura et al. (Kamimura et al., 2001), or in the work of Yim et al. (Yim
et al., 2002)). MTRAN and PolyBot use both a large number of simple modules, they both
have been physically implemented, and they both can self-reconfigure. Despite their very good
hardware flexibility, both MTRAN and PolyBot have been designed with a centralized control
perspective, which, in comparison with the decentralized ones, shows reduced robustness to
failures. The latest articles on these two research works show that MTRAN is keeping the
centralized control approach (Kurokawa et al., 2003) while the PolyBot team is working on new
decentralized approaches under the name of Phase Automata (Zhang et al., 2003).
The first 3D self-reconfigurable robot with decentralized control has been the CONRO hard-
ware (Castano et al., 2000) which runs the decentralized control developed by Støy et al. (Støy
et al., 2002) or the one developed by Salemi et al. (Salemi et al., 2001). These controllers allow
the robot’s hardware modules to change their relative position while the system is running.
During this dynamic change, each involved module re-adapts autonomously its behavioral role
in the system. Although this demonstrates software robustness towards structure modifications
and failures, automatic hardware failure correction is not yet implemented and would require a
major redesign effort. Hardware failure detection and correction are in fact known to be hard
to implement in a reliable way (Blanke et al., 1997).

2.1.2. Swarm-bot Robustness. Robustness is ensured within the SWARM-BOTS project

by distributed hardware and control. Each s-bot is a simple but fully autonomous unit capable
of displacement, sensing and acting based on local information and decisions. This is a clear
distinction from self-reconfigurable robots, where each unit has no mobility, very limited sensing
capabilities and acts often under the control of a central unit. The self-assembling ability of the
swarm-bot is added on top of the s-bots, enabling a swarm behavior at the level of the physically
connected swarm-bot system. The global task execution is obtained by the exploitation of robot-
robot and robot-environment properties, without centralized planning and control. Both the
swarm-bot control strategy and the distributed hardware ensure good robustness to hardware
failures.
6 Mondada et al.

Figure 3. Bottom view of the s-bot robot. A differential treels c drive ensure the displacement of the s-bot. The
motor base with the treels c can be oriented independently of the main body.

As mentioned above, the robustness of the concept is based on the distribution of the task over
a group of s-bots, each of them able of autonomous displacement, sensing, acting and control.
The mobility of the system is ensured by a combination of two tracks and two wheels, as
illustrated in Figure 3. Each track is connected to the wheel of the same side and it is controlled
by an independent motor. Wheel and track on the same side are driven by the same motor,
building a differential drive system controlled by two motors. This combination of tracks and
wheels was labelled Differential Treels c Drive2 . Such a combination has two advantages. First, it
allows a more efficient rotation on the spot due to the larger diameter and position of the wheels.
Second, it gives to the traction system a shape close to the cylindrical one of the main body
(turret), avoiding in this way the typical rectangular shape of simple tracks and thus making
navigation simpler.
The differential treels drive allows each s-bot to move in moderately rough terrains3 , while
more complex situations are handled by swarm-bot configurations.
The motor base with the treels c can rotate with respect to the main body by means of a
motorized axis, as illustrated in Figure 3. This ensures an independent movement of the upper
part where the sensors and the physical connections to other robots are located.
Each s-bot is equipped with sensors necessary for navigation, such as infrared proximity sensors,
light and humidity sensors, accelerometers and incremental encoders on each degree of freedom.
In addition, each robot is equipped with sensors and communication devices to detect and
communicate with other s-bots, such as an omni-directional camera, color LEDs all around the
robot, local color detectors and sound emitters and receivers. In addition to a large number of
sensors for detection of the environment, several sensors provide each s-bot with information
about physical contacts, efforts, and reactions at the interconnection joints with other s-bots.
These include torque sensors on most joints as well as traction sensors on the connection belt.
Research on social insects (Camazine et al., 2001) suggests that collective robotics could benefit
from multi-range and multi-modal sensing in order to perceive and exchange signals at multiple
levels and in several circumstances. Because of this, as well as for more practical reasons of
2
Treels is a contraction of TRacks and whEELS
3
Obstacles no more than 3–4 cm high, 30% slope, and gaps not larger than 3–4 cm.
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 7

Figure 4. The environment in rescue operation is composed of obstacles of very different size and shape, including
wires, walls, tubes and gaps.

interference, infrared proximity (active) sensors mainly have a very short range. Sound has
instead a much longer range span. The camera, which is a passive sensor, is thought to be used
both for long and short range sensing, depending on the features extracted from the image.
The control architecture of a swarm-bot consists of distributed algorithms based on local
information and simple self-organization rules inspired upon ant colony behaviors (Şahin et al.,
2002; Dorigo et al., 2004). Although this type of control algorithm does not need much compu-
tational power, the large number of sensors and degrees of freedom requires fast pre-processing
and efficient control. Therefore s-bots are equipped with a network of several processors, each of
them responsible for a particular sub-task in the system. The main processor is in charge of the
management of the entire system and of the communication with a base station for monitoring
purposes. This processor runs a standard Linux OS allowing in this way the use of standard
development tools, such as compilers and debuggers, as well as an easy porting of custom made
robotic development tools, such as specific control libraries or monitoring tools. S-bots are also
equipped with a radio link to a base station just for monitoring purposes (not for control).

2.2. Versatility

The environment where a robot has to move about in applications of extreme exploration includes
a large number of obstacles anywhere and of any kind: from fissures to deep vertical holes, from
small pebbles to large rocks, from wires to walls, from long tubes to compact blocks, etc. (e.g.,
Figure 4). It may happen, for instance, that robots need to be introduced into small holes, and
once inside they need to overcome large gaps, to descend a vertical duct ending in a large void,
and finally to pass in other narrow passageways. Robots designed to cope with only one or two of
these features are surely challenged by the other ones. It may also happen that a mission starts
with a goal and ends up with another one. For instance, a mission can start with an exploratory
phase and finish with a transportation task. To be successful, a robot has therefore to be very
versatile, that is, capable of dynamically changing shape and control functionality depending on
the situation it faces.
8 Mondada et al.

2.2.1. State of the Art. Modularity is a widely used technique to ensure versatility. At the
control level, modularity is often implemented by distributed approaches in the structure of the
control system (Callen, 1998; Zhang et al., 2001) or in the control process itself, as in collective
robotics. At the hardware level, modularity and versatility are clearly represented by the field
of self-reconfigurable robots.
Modularity provides versatility at several levels in collective robotics. A physically distributed
system allows distributed sensing, acting and processing. Simultaneous distributed sensing de-
livers high flexibility in placing the sensors according to the configuration of the search space,
thus improving search efficiency. A good example of this type of situation is given by Hayes et
al. (Hayes et al., 2001) where a very difficult search task, plume tracing, is performed using a
swarm of robots equipped with odor sensors.
Distributed acting allows versatility in transport tasks (Kube and Bonabeau, 2000; Groß and
Dorigo, 2004), exploiting the possibility to change the number of agents involved depending on
the effort needed. Sorting is another example where multiple agents can improve versatility of
the system (Martinoli et al., 1999; Wilson et al., 2004). Transport (Detrain and Deneubourg,
1997), sorting (Deneubourg et al., 1991), or structure building (Camazine et al., 2001) are typical
tasks where collective robotics can take inspiration from the behavior of social insects (Bonabeau
et al., 1999) providing efficient and versatile solutions.
At the hardware level, advanced modularity and versatility are shown by self-reconfigurable
robots. These systems are built with a large number of physical modules acting together within
a unique body. Each module provides few degrees of freedom. These modules, when assembled
together, give the body an extraordinary physical versatility. An additional feature is given by
the possibility of the system to connect or disconnect modules autonomously, enabling self-
reconfiguration. Based on such a characteristic, a robot can change shape depending on the
environment, as shown by PolyBot (Yim et al., 2000a) and by other robots such as MTRAN
(Kamimura et al., 2001). The structure of the modules and of the possible configurations change
very much across existing systems. The most advanced ones show 3D configurations like snakes,
tracks, spiders, and quadruped legged systems. Both PolyBot and MTRAN have displayed
transition between shapes in hardware.
Experiments of mobile robots equipped with connection capabilities showed that it is possible
to create larger structures. This is the case of the Millibot robot units, which have been modified
to enable the creation of a Millibot train (Khosla et al., 2002). Such a structure is equipped
with one degree of freedom between each robot, enabling a rotation around a horizontal axis.
This allows each robot placed inside the structure to lift vertically the next robot connected to
it, bending the train vertically. Although the whole structure seems to bring some additional
mobility when facing large obstacles, it offers a very limited flexibility and lateral mobility.
Moreover, the version of Millibot able to create trains has very limited sensor capabilities, due
to mechanical constraints and small size.

2.2.2. Swarm-bot Versatility. Versatility is given in a swarm-bot by the presence of many

entities that can self-assemble in a unique body and disband when the union is no longer
necessary. This feature combines the properties of control versatility found in collective robotics
with some hardware versatility found in self-reconfiguring robots. Since each s-bot is a fully
autonomous mobile robot, a swarm-bot can not only self-reconfigure, but it can also self-assemble
and disassemble efficiently. S-bots can leave a swarm-bot configuration, move around it and
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 9

Figure 5. The s-bot rigid gripper rotates around a horizontal axis. It can connect either ensuring a rigid grip or
leaving some freedom of movement.

join it again when necessary. This is a major additional feature with respect to existing self-
reconfigurable robots, which form a unique and monolithic structure. Compared with a Millibot
train, a swarm-bot can form more complex and flexible configurations, due to better mechanical
and electronics capabilities. Each s-bot has, in fact, about 50 sensors and 9 actuators, as opposed
to a Millibot unit which has just about 10 sensors and 3 actuators. The large number of sensors
and actuators allows s-bots to ensure more efficient connections and operations.
S-bots have two types of possible physical interconnections for self-assembling into a swarm-bot
configuration: rigid and semi-flexible.
Rigid connections between two s-bots are established by a rigid gripper mounted on a hor-
izontal active axis (Figure 5). Such a gripper has a very large acceptance area allowing it to
realize a secure grasp at any angle and, if necessary, allowing it to lift another s-bot. Similar
connections are made by ants when they build bridges or other rigid structures (Lioni et al.,
2001). The large acceptance area is a very significant aspect for connections taking place among
independent autonomous robots on rough terrains. Building a self-assembling swarm-bot by
means of interconnecting robots is a very different task than interconnecting modules in a self-
reconfigurable robot. This last can in fact compute the exact position of each module in order
to ensure precise positioning during interconnection (Agrawal et al., 2001). This is not the case
in a swarm-bot where there is freedom of connecting at several angles and with less accuracy.
This is a very crucial difference with respect to a Millibot train, whose units must align very
accurately in order to interconnect.
The s-bot rigid gripper can grasp other s-bots on a T-shaped ring around the main s-bot body
(turret). If it is not completely closed, such a grasp lets the two joined robots free to move with
respect to each other while navigating on a rough terrain. If the grasp is firm, the gripper ensures
a very rigid connection which can even sustain the lifting up of another s-bot. However, lifting
with the rigid gripper more than one s-bot is not possible. This is a major difference between a
swarm-bot and other self-reconfigurable robots, which can instead form quite complex 3D shapes
while moving and overcoming obstacles. Nevertheless, a swarm-bot does not require complex 3D
shapes, since its mobility is guaranteed by the combined effort of each s-bot.
Semi-flexible connections (Figure 6) are implemented by a gripper positioned at the end of
a flexible arm actuated by three servo-motors positioned at the point of attachment on the
main body. The three degrees of freedom allow to extend and move laterally and vertically the
arm (Figure 7 and 8, respectively). This structure is a modified version of the DELTA robot
(Clavel, 1988). The gripper at the end of the arm (called in the following “flexible gripper”) is
10 Mondada et al.

Figure 6. Two s-bots connected using semi-flexible connections.

similar to the rigid gripper mentioned above. The orientation of this gripper is kept in a default
position by the cables flexibility, but can rotate around a vertical axis. Rigid and semi-flexible
connections have complementary roles in a swarm-bot. A rigid connection is mainly used to form
solid chains for passing large gaps or obstacles (Figure 2). A semi-flexible connection is instead
used for configurations where s-bots need to stay close to each other but at the same time they
still retain relative freedom of movement with respect to each other (Figure 9). A swarm-bot
can also have mixed configurations, which include both rigid and semi-flexible connections. A
third type of connection among s-bots can take place through an external object in case of a
transporting task (Figure 10).
Rigid and semi-flexible connections are not designed to create complex 3D structures. Most of
the configurations envisioned are close to the examples shown in Figure 2 and 9. In any case, a
rigid connection allows the creation of simple 3D structures, for instance where peripheral s-bots

Figure 7. The semi-flexible connection can be extended, retracted, and moved laterally.
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 11

Figure 8. The semi-flexible connection can be moved also vertically.

Figure 9. Graphic visualization of how lateral semi-flexible connections are going to be used to keep relative
mobility between s-bots while they are in a swarm-bot configuration. This flexible structure can help for instance
to pass local small obstacles.

are placed vertically to help a swarm-bot to overcome obstacles. This type of 3D flexibility is
exploited mainly for climbing obstacles too steep for the tracks of a single s-bot.

Figure 10. Most swarm-bot configurations will include both rigid and semi-flexible connections.
12 Mondada et al.

2.3. Rough Terrain Navigation

A robot capable of navigating in unstructured environments should be able to get across rough
terrains as well as through cavities and narrow passages. A swarm-bot offers within this context
an innovative solution in improving mobility by exploiting physical collaboration of a collective
system.

2.3.1. State of the Art. Navigation in rough terrain conditions is mainly addressed by
articulated rovers and reconfigurable robots. Examples of rovers include the shrimp robot (Es-
tier et al., 2000), the family of space exploration robots by ESA4 (Visentin et al., 2001), the
pathfinder rover used on Mars (Stone, 1996), as well as other specific rovers for missions like
volcano explorations (Bares and Wettergreen, 1999). This type of research is mainly focussed
on mechanical structures of articulated wheels and tracks and their ability to pass obstacles.
Although most of these rovers are remotely controlled, research aims also at developing sensors
for autonomous operation (Vandapel et al., 1999) or to help the remote operator (Matthies et al.,
2002).
Some researchers consider multiple rovers for all-terrain exploration (Chien et al., 2000; Earon
et al., 2001) exploiting distributed hardware and, in some cases, distributed control to obtain a
more robust system and better exploration performances5 . To the best of the authors’ knowledge,
nobody has yet tried to take advantage of the collective aspect for obstacle climbing, except for
some preliminary experiments using the modified version of Millibot mentioned earlier.
Research in self-reconfigurable robots addresses the same problem in a totally different way,
building modular systems that are flexible and can walk, creep, and roll in rough environment
conditions. Simulations of PolyBot have been based on an all-terrain scenario (Yim et al., 2000b)
and the typical goal of the CONRO system is earthquake search-and-rescue and battlefield
surveillance and scouting (Castano et al., 2000). Despite these goals, the sensors included in
these developments are mainly used for perception of the internal state of the system and there
is practically no perception of the environment. This is motivated in some cases by pure tele-
operation. Pure tele-operation, however, may not be sufficient for efficient operation. The remote
perception of the environment is in fact limited by time delays, communication bandwidth, and
representation of the environment to the remote operator (Murphy et al., 2000; Matthies et al.,
2002). Semi-autonomous tele-operation, using local information and performing local control,
can improve operability and allow to achieve the task in an efficient way. There is therefore
a need for including sensors on this type of robots, as shown by recent work on the CONRO
system (Støy et al., 2002).
Another problem in rough terrain operation of self-reconfigurable robots is the contact of the
robot with the ground. Although snake-like structures can be quite efficient, performance is less
convincing in legged configurations. The contact with the ground is guaranteed in this latter
case by the module at the end of the chain. Such a module is in this way forced to have its
inter-modules connector, that is its most sensitive part, in contact with the ground. A future
reconfiguration of the system might therefore fail due to possible severe damage of the modules
previously used as feet. Solutions to this problem are yet to be found.

4
European Space Agency
5
http://www.sandia.gov/isrc/Swarm.html
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 13

The approach taken by a Millibot train is much closer to that of the swarm-bot concept.
However, despite its ability to self-assemble and form chains that can climb large obstacles, the
very limited capacities of each module and the limited lateral mobility of the one-dimensional
trains show strong limitations of the entire concept.

2.3.2. Swarm-bot Ability to Deal with Rough Terrain. The overall mobility of a
swarm-bot is guaranteed by the mobility of each single s-bot composing it. S-bots are not designed
to be used as modules of a leg, as it happens for instance in the case of self-reconfigurable robots.
The gripper used for the interconnection between two robots does not have sufficient torque to
support this type of structure. The configurations displayed by a swarm-bot are mainly bi-
dimensional with the possibility of lifting up lateral s-bots in order to overcome large obstacles.
The tracks of one s-bot are therefore always the point of contact to the ground for a swarm-
bot. The possibility of rotating the tracks with respect to the turret (Figure 3) ensures suitable
mobility of the entire structure even when s-bots are rigidly connected.
The control of a swarm-bot structure in rough terrain conditions is strongly inspired on insect
behavior (Lioni et al., 2001; Şahin et al., 2002). Most structures are built of chains of s-bots
combined with lateral connections for overall stability. The process of passing an obstacle is
based on local push-pull operations. The self-assembling feature is strongly exploited: a swarm-
bot structure is assembled, if necessary, and disbanded as soon as possible, using in this way the
robots as much as possible as independent units.
As a final remark, the limited size of one s-bot fits very well the constraints of a catastrophic
search operation which requires introduction of a robotic unit into very narrow entry points.
This characteristic gives to the swarm-bot entity the possibility of accessing internal voids. Once
inside, a swarm-bot navigates adapting to the environment conditions which may demand self-
assembling of the swarm and disaggregation of the same when the union is no longer needed.

3. Hardware Implementation

This section illustrates the feasibility of the swarm-bot concept, showing how it has been imple-
mented and briefly summarizing some preliminary results. The discussion presents an overview of
the mechanical (Section 3.1), electronic (Section 3.2), and software (Section 3.3) implementations
of the first prototype.

3.1. Mechanics

The design described in Figure 1 was done so as to include all necessary details to build a
real robot. All parts were designed to be feasible and most mechanisms tested during the
design. Figure 11 shows all major parts included in this design. Each of them was translated
into a technical manufacturing drawing (blueprint) and then produced. Figure 12 shows the
corresponding real parts.
The production methods employed were very different depending on the type of part. Standard
machining was used for very simple components, such as some bars of the flexible arm, or parts
14 Mondada et al.

Figure 11. Exploded view of most of the components.

that needed to be metallic, such as some gears or axes. Chemical machining was instead employed
for flat parts like the electric contacts molded inside the gripper (Figure 17). Most of the parts
were molded, which implied first to manufacture a mold and then to create the part itself. This
manufacturing approach asks for a bigger initial effort but it allows to reproduce parts very
easily. Due to the number of s-bots that we plan to produce (thirty-five), this method allows a
cheap and fast production.
At the time of writing, two s-bots have been fully assembled and tested (Figure 13). By March
2004, the plan is to have a swarm-bot of 10 fully operational s-bots.
The treels c mechanism has shown very good performance during tests in rough terrain con-
ditions (Figure 14). The association between tracks and wheels performs very well both in
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 15

Figure 12. Exploded view of most of the real parts.

straight motion, where tracks ensure a powerful displacement, and in sharp turns, where the
wheels, which are bigger than the tracks and placed on a bigger radius, play a key role and
ensure a very good rotation.
The rigid gripper (Figure 15) is another important part of an s-bot, and it has been crafted so
that it can lift another s-bot. This feature requires a good torque and a good rigid connection
between the gripper and the s-bot to be lifted. The gripper is able to grasp rigidly another s-bot
using a lockable gripper, which can be locked mechanically to keep its position.
Comparison results between simulated and real robots both for a single s-bot and for a swarm-
bot configuration are presented in Section 5.

3.2. Electronics

An overview of the electronic structure controlling the robot is given in Figure 16. The CPU is an
Intel XScale processor running Linux OS and controlling directly the sound and camera interfaces.
The camera is a standard color web cam with a resolution of 640x480 pixels connected to the main
16 Mondada et al.

Figure 13. Swarm-bot prototype using the rigid connection to pass a gap.

processor using a USB bus. A spherical mirror facing the vertical optics allows to have a 360◦
panoramic view. All other devices on the robot are controlled by local PICT M micro-controllers6
communicating with the main processor using an I2 C bus.
The electronics is mainly included in the central s-bot body (turret), but several printed circuits
are located in places where they support sensors or local control electronics. In some cases the
printed circuit is molded inside the mechanical parts, as seen for instance in Figure 17.
The most important integration effort in size, power consumption, and computational power
has been made at the level of the main XScale Linux board. Developed to fit in a very small size
(just about a credit card), this board has been integrated successfully inside the s-bot after a long
6
PICT M micro-controllers are products of Microchip Corp. See http://www.microchip.com for more details.

Figure 14. Treels c mechanism during tests.

 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 17

Figure 15. CAD and real view of the gripper mechanism partially assembled to show the internal mechanics. On
the real view the black gear ensures the elevation of the gripper. Inside the gripper support a white gear ensures
the symmetrical configurations of the jaws.

process of prototyping and software development. The main characteristics of this board are:
64MB RAM memory, 32MB Flash memory, two slots for compact-flash cards (able to support
radio-ethernet or bluetooth), USB master and slave interfaces, I2 C bus and serial port. The
XScale processor runs at 400 MHz. Tests of Linux running on the board have shown a power
consumption of 750 mW. Computational tests have shown that this type of processor can process
simple algorithms on full color images (640x480) in 100–200 ms.
Each s-bot is equipped with two Lithium-ION accumulators placed between the tracks. The
capacity of these accumulators is 10 Wh. Preliminary measurements show a power consumption
of one s-bot between 3 and 5 W, which ensure continuous operation for at least two hours.

2x servo Lithium ION Battery 10Wh

3x PIC processor gripper and arm motor
gripper sensor PIC processor 2D traction sensor
XScale Linux omnidirectional camera
WiFi 400MHz
8x RGB LEDs
64M RAM
32M Flash 2xspeaker PIC processor
(CompactFlash) light sensors
4x microphone
3 axis inclinometer PIC processor 15 proximity sensors
PIC processor 2x humidity and
temperature sensors PIC processor 4 ground proximity
gripper sensor sensors
elevation motor
3x PIC processor rotation motor 2x PIC processor differential treels
DC/DC gripper motor drive
I2C bus

Figure 16. Overview of the electronics controlling the s-bot.

18 Mondada et al.

Figure 17. Gripper teeth: 3D model showing the internal printed circuit and electrical contact (left) and real part
(right).

3.3. Software

The low level software is distributed among the 14 processors controlling all the functionalities.
One of them is the ARM main processor running Linux and described above. The ten other
processors are PICT M micro-controllers, each programmed for a very specific task. Five of them
perform motor control, while the other five perform sensor processing. The five PICT M motor
controls have been programmed in assembler, and the remaining other eight in C. All of these
processors have a part of the code managing the communication through the I2 C bus, whereas
the rest manages the custom functionalities they are responsible for. This last part of code can
include some preprocessing or some local control loop which can be supervised by the main
CPU with commands sent over the I2 C bus. As an example, it can be mentioned the control
loop using the torque sensors on the motors or the IR sensors data preprocessing.

4. The Simulation Tool

This section presents the simulation environment (swarmbot3d) complementing the hardware
part of the swarm-bot concept described earlier.
The simulator was planned in order to cover the current lack of commercial products or research
prototypes allowing to tackle all the aforementioned aspects of the SWARM-BOTS project at
the same time. Most of the tools available on the market concentrate, in fact, on specific aspects
of the distributed intelligence paradigm and they generally deal with 2D worlds only.
Swarmbot3d was developed to work as an aiding tool for accurately predicting 3D kinematics
and dynamics of a single s-bot in a swarm-bot, for evaluating possible new options for hardware
parts, for designing new experimental set-ups in 3D, and for quickly evaluating new distributed
control ideas before porting them to the real hardware (Pettinaro et al., 2002).
The main characteristics of this simulation environment can be summarized as follows.

3D dynamics. It is a 3D dynamics simulator of a multi-agent system (swarm-bot) of cooper-

ating robots (s-bots).
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 19

Hardware s-bot compatibility. It provides s-bot models with the functionalities available on
the real s-bots. It can simulate different sensor devices such as IR proximity sensors, an
omni-directional camera, an inclinometer, sound, and light sensors.
Software s-bot compatibility. Controllers that are developed using swarmbot3d can be ported
directly to the hardware s-bot due to a common application programming interface.
Interactive control. It provides online interactive control during simulation, useful for rapid
prototyping of new control algorithms. Users can try, debug and inspect simulation objects
while the simulation is running.
Multi-level models. It provides most robot simulation modules at different levels of detail.
It also provides a hierarchy of four s-bot reference models with increasing level of detail.
Dynamic model switching is an included feature which allows to change the robot represen-
tation model in real-time. This allows a user to switch between a coarse and a detailed level
of simulation model to improve simulation performance at any time.
Swarm handling. It allows to handle a group of robots either as independent units or in a
swarm-bot configuration, which can be thought of as an entity made of s-bots connected
to each other. The connections are created dynamically at simulation time and can be
eliminated when the components disband. Connections may be of a rigid nature giving to
the resulting structure the solidity of a whole entity. This feature is unique with respect to
other existing robot simulators.

This section is dedicated to present several aspects of the swarmbot3d simulation tool: from
its internal structure to how robots have been modeled.

4.1. State of the Art

Simulation of multiple robot systems has been addressed mainly in the fields of multi-agent
systems, artificial life, distributed AI and autonomous mobile robotics. The simulation tools de-
veloped for these areas, depending on the abstraction level, have ranged from simple cellular au-
tomata to highly distributed realistic environments such as, for instance, MissionLab (MacKenzie
et al., 1997), which supports execution of multiple robots both in 2D-simulation and on actual
robotics platforms.
Another simulation package for large multi-agent systems is Swarm (Minar et al., 1996) de-
veloped at the Santa-Fe Institute. The modeling formalism adopted by Swarm is a collection of
independent agents interacting via discrete events. Each entity can generate events that affect the
entity itself and other agents. A simulation consists of scheduling the interactions among agents.
Although Swarm simulates multiple agents, this discrete-event simulator is not appropriate for
simulation of mobile robots.
There are three further multiple robot simulators worth being mentioned: Player/Stage, Team-
Bots, and MuRoS. They are all designed to deal with 2D worlds, and, because of this, they do not
comply with the basic requirement of simulating s-bots in 3D. Player/Stage (Gerkey et al., 2001)
is a public domain simulator developed at the Robotics Lab of the University of South California
(USC). Its characteristic is that of being a scalable multiple mobile robot simulator with each
robot moving about and sensing a two-dimensional bit-mapped environment. TeamBots (Balch,
20 Mondada et al.

1998) is a Java-based 2D simulator for multi-agent mobile robotics research. Its distribution is
written entirely in Java and its release is open source. Last, MuRoS (Chaimowicz et al., 2001) is a
simulator developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Such a simulator allows 2D simulation of
several multi-robot applications such as cooperative manipulation, formation control, foraging,
etc. It is interesting to point out that in MuRoS tasks both loosely and tightly coupled can be
simulated. With the exception of the restriction to 2D environments, MuRoS seems to address
the same goals of the SWARM-BOTS project, including the formation of flexible and rigid
cooperating structures.
It should be mentioned for the sake of completeness that there exists a variety of robotic soccer
simulators such as the official RoboCup simulator (Noda, 1995), JavaSoccer, SoccerBots (part
of the TeamBots package). However, all of them are used to simulate only disconnected robots
and they do not consider the possibility of dynamically creating inter-robot connections.
Finally, we mention Webots, a simulator which was originally developed for the KheperaT M
robot but which is now able to support any type of autonomous vehicle, including wheeled, legged
and flying robots (Michel, 1998). Earlier versions of this simulator were purely kinematics based.
However, its latest release has been extended to handle dynamics using a physics engine based
on the Open Dynamics Engine7 libraries. The software includes a complete library of actuators
and sensors for building customized robots. Webots would have been an interesting candidate
for simulating a swarm-bot; unfortunately, its version using dynamics became available too late
to be considered in the project.

4.2. Structure

Swarmbot3d is a 3D dynamics simulator. This means that it is able to take into account physical
laws related to properties such as mass, friction, or acceleration in the usual Euclidean space.
The simulator is built on top of Vortex8 , a commercial physics engine used in many applications,
including the pioneering work of Karl Sims on evolved creatures (Sims, 1994).
Simulation models of environments and robots, as well as world properties such as friction,
gravity, and so on, are all defined in an external text file written in XML format. Robot control
programs are expressed in terms of the same application programming interface (API) available
in the real robot hardware. This guarantees full portability of any control developed using
swarmbot3d.
The simulator provides a simple graphic user interface (GUI) developed in Python, a high
level interpreter language, for controlling the simulator’s parameters (such as gravity, simulator
speed, time step, and so on) and for controlling directly each s-bot. This Python-based GUI
provides also a command line interface for directly interacting with the simulated robots. This
feature has shown to be very useful for online debugging, scripting, and rapid prototyping of
control strategies.

7
Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) is an open source project.
8
http://www.cm-labs.com .
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 21

Table 1. Modularity of the simulated s-bot in subsystem compo-

nents with different levels of abstraction.

Subsystem Abstraction

⇒ 2 spherical wheels
treels c ⇒ 6 spherical wheels
⇒ 6 detailed teethed wheels

⇒ cylinder
turret
⇒ detailed description

⇒ box with on-off connection capability

rigid gripper
⇒ detailed toothed jaws

flexible gripper ⇒ detailed scissor-like arm

4.3. S-bot Modeling

Swarmbot3d has been designed with three main features in mind: (i) modularity, (ii) multi-level
modeling, and (iii) dynamic model switching. Such a multi-featured design philosophy allows to
build a flexible and efficient simulator.

4.3.1. Modularity. This characteristic allows users to have a large freedom in customizing
their own swarm according to their specific research goals. This revealed to be very useful during
the early prototype stages of the robot hardware when its specifications often changed. Since the
simulation models were developed in parallel with the hardware prototype, the use of modularity
allowed not only to re-model a specific s-bot geometry, but also to extend swarmbot3d with
new mechanical parts or new sensor devices which became available throughout the hardware
development. To implement the modular design philosophy, one s-bot model was divided in 4
subsystems: the treels c , the turret, the rigid gripper, and the flexible gripper. Some of these
subsystems have been implemented at different abstraction levels, as explained in the next
subsection (see also Table 1).

4.3.2. Multi-Level Modeling. This characteristic provides different models for the same
part, so that an end-user is given the possibility to load the most efficient and functionally
equivalent abstraction model among those available to represent the real s-bot.
For example, one s-bot may be loaded as a detailed model when an accurate simulation is
needed; or it may be loaded as a crude abstraction for the evaluation of a big swarm, in which
case the accuracy of a single robot might not be a crucial aspect. People working with learning
or swarm intelligence techniques might in fact be more interested in simple coarse s-bot models.
Conversely, those experimenting with the interaction of relatively small groups of s-bots (between
5 and 10) might prefer to use a more refined s-bot model.
Viewed in terms of subsystems, defining an abstraction for one s-bot consists in defining an
opportune combination of some of the subsystems at the desired level of detail (Table 1). Since
the use of a particular model refinement influences considerably the time required to simulate
22 Mondada et al.

it on a given computing hardware, the level of abstraction has to be chosen as an opportune

trade-off between simulation efficiency (speed) and accurate reproduction of reality.
As an aid to the end-user, 4 reference s-bot descriptions differing in their level of abstraction
have been defined and prepackaged: detailed, medium, simple, and fast. Users can anyhow still
select among the s-bot subsystems the combination of approximations which best suits the
specific research goals they intend to pursue. A brief description of each reference model is
outlined in the following.

Detailed s-bot This robot model is a quite faithful replica of the real s-bot: all its mechanical
parts are reproduced with all the degrees of freedom required (Figure 18 on the left). This
model replicates in details the geometry of the real hardware (Figure 19) as well as the
masses, centre of masses, torques, accelerations, and speeds.
The detailed model comprises four mechanical modules: treels, turret, rigid gripper, and
flexible gripper. Its main characteristics are reported below.
− A detailed chassis description comprehensive of 4 ground IR sensors (2 at the bottom,
1 in front and 1 on the back).
− Six teethed wheels, three on each side, with the two middle ones slightly larger and
located outward as in the hardware s-bot.
− A detailed turret representation.
− A rigid gripper hinged on the front of the turret and endowed with two teethed jaws.
− A flexible gripper attached through three hinges to the s-bot’s body and endowed with
two teethed jaws.
Although the detailed model closely matches the s-bot hardware, it lacks the caterpillar-like
rubber teethed band joining the inner wheels of each track. The simulation of this track
was computationally very expensive and provided only a negligible gain in the realism of
simulating the real hardware.

Figure 18. Detailed (first from left), medium (second from left), simple (third from left), and fast (fourth from
left) s-bot models. Fast and simple models have both 2 wheels and a very simplified rotational turret. The medium
model differs from the detailed model only by having 6 simplified spherical wheels, a simplified rigid gripper and
lacking the flexible side arm.
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 23

Figure 19. Mechanical diagram of a real s-bot.

Medium s-bot This s-bot model is shaped with a detailed description of the treels system,
although the 6 wheels are in this case defined as simple spheres (Figure 18, second from the
left). The turret is defined in full detail but without the presence of the flexible gripper. A
coarse representation of the rigid gripper (a hinged box) gives this model the possibility of
realizing limited on/off connections to other s-bots. The turret model implements all main
hardware sensors such as infrared, sound, camera, and light sensors.
This model is still reasonably efficient and therefore it allows to develop distributed con-
trollers over quite large groups of units on smooth planes as well as on uneven terrains. The
simplified rigid gripper and the absence of the flexible gripper, however, limit its use just to
single s-bot missions or to collective tasks in groups of s-bots with simple rigid connections.
Simple s-bot This model is a minimalistic abstraction of the most salient characteristics iden-
tifying one s-bot (Figure 18, third from the left). It has a traction system made of one
sphere with two spherically shaped wheels hinged to its sides, and a turret made of a bare
cylinder. Caster wheels are added to give mechanical stability to the model. Mass and size
are roughly the same as those of the real s-bot.
This is a model designed to test and validate control algorithms, developed using the fast
model, in environment with real gravity pull.
The simple model, benefitting from its minimal structure and therefore from its high sim-
ulation speed, is very useful for investigating computation intensive distributed control
policies spread over a large number of units (e.g. genetic algorithms) in environments using
the real gravity pull. However, because this model implies real masses and forces, it is
not possible to run simulations using large time steps without incurring in problems of
instability. Furthermore, its applicability is strongly limited to environments with very
limited roughness: when this constraint ceases to hold, a more refined level of detail is
required.
24 Mondada et al.

Table 2. Comparison of features among detailed, medium, simple, and

fast s-bot simulation models. Yes and no respectively indicate the
presence or absence of a particular feature in the model.

Model Detailed Medium Simple Fast1

driving wheels # 6 6 2 2
IR proximity sensors yes yes yes2 yes2
ground sensors yes yes no no
camera yes yes no no
sound module yes yes yes2 yes2
rigid gripper yes yes4 no3 no3
flexible gripper yes no no no
dynamical bodies # 23 8 6 6
typical RTM 3 31.8 94.7 9601
time step 10 10 10 1001

1) Measurement taken with 1/50th of gravity and 1/20th of mass.

2) Using sample-based look-up table.
3) No physical gripper model: connections are possible using virtual links.
4) Coarse version, i.e. sticking box.

Fast s-bot This model is a scaled down version of the simple model with the same modelling
structure (Figure 18, first from the right). However, its linear dimensions are halved and its
mass is 1/20th with respect to the simple model.
It is meant for simple tests in environments with 1/50th of the real gravity pull. The
reduced masses and unrealistic gravity enables to use a large time step without getting
unstable simulations, at least in flat environments. This possibility allows to increase the
simulation speed up to 10 times, although the use of this abstraction on terrains modeled
as mesh surfaces may lead to unstable simulations if the time step is too big (> 10ms).

To establish how computationally heavy each of the 4 models described above is, a performance
evaluation experiment was set. This consisted simply in loading and using one s-bot at each
different abstraction level on a horizontal plane. The performance result for each type of model
is presented here in terms of its Real Time Multiplier (RTM) value which refers to how fast real
time can be simulated. Table 2 summarizes each model characteristics and gives a typical RTM
value for each of them. RTM values were obtained running the tests on a dual 3.06GHz Xeon
PC with one nVidia QuadroFx 1000 graphics card.

4.3.3. Dynamic Model Switching. Using the hierarchical abstraction levels introduced
above, it has been implemented in the simulator a way to change the used s-bot representation
during simulation (Pettinaro et al., 2003). The availability of such a feature allows a user, for
example, to start a simulation with the simplest abstraction level for one s-bot when the terrain
onto which it moves is flat and to switch to a more refined model representation when the
environment or the interaction among s-bots require a more detailed treatment. Dynamic model
changing allows swarmbot3d to increase simulation speed by introducing complexity only when
it is needed.
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 25

Table 3. Sensors types and their implementations in the simulation environment.

Each sensor may have multiple implementations which can be chosen by the user.

S-Bot Sensors Implementations

Sample table based

proximity sensor
Ray tracing
ground sensor Ray tracing
Instant on-off with spatial decaying intensity
sound
Sound wave propagation with spatial decaying intensity
speed sensor Standard library function
torque sensor Standard library function
inclinometer Comparison with the absolute XZ plane
light sensor Ray tracing based with shadowing
Abstract camera using high level objects
camera
Low-level fish-eye view

This feature, however, assumes that all representation models are compatible with each other,
that is, all models show the same behaviour when a particular robot command is issued. It is
therefore important to adjust each model so that speed, mass, and geometry are calibrated to
ensure compatibility, even if they differ in representation detail. For this reason, it was developed
an extension of the simple model named basic model possessing a simple on/off connecting
device, which was previously available just for the medium model, and a ray traced model of
the IR sensors (see Section 4.4).
Thanks to this model changing mechanism, users can use the basic model when the terrain
is flat, change to the medium model when the terrain gets rough or change to the detailed
model when the flexible arm is needed. Currently, such a model switching has to be carried out
manually, however work is in progress for investigating ways for automating this feature, so to
leave to the simulator the decision on when changing the abstraction level.

4.4. Sensor Modeling

Real s-bots are equipped with several types of sensors which are read by the control program
running on each s-bot. Swarmbot3d implements 8 types of sensors matching those available on
the real units. Some sensors (such as the speed and torque sensors) have been implemented
using standard library functions of the underlying physics engine, while others needed imple-
mentation and calibration with the real sensors. Table 3 summarizes the virtual sensors and
their implementation currently available in swarmbot3d.
The infrared sensors used by the proximity sensor and the ground sensors are simulated using
ray-tracing by probing the sensor vicinity with 5 rays (1 central and 4 peripheral) within the
sensing cone of each virtual sensor. The 5 rays detect any intersection of nearby objects and
compute an average distance value which is subsequently converted to an integer sensor response.
The mapping function has been obtained by linear regression of the experimental values.
26 Mondada et al.

Table 4. Simulator performance for different abstraction models. The numbers represent real time
multipliers, i.e., the ratio between simulated real time and simulation time (the higher, the better).

Disconnected S-Bots (smooth plane) Conn. S-Bots Disconn. S-Bots

Model
1 2 5 10 20 40 5 on smooth plane 5 on rough terrain

Fast1 960 490 200 96 43.3 17.6 88.1 147

Simple 94.7 49 20 9.6 4.3 1.8 8.5 14.9
Medium 31.8 15 4.7 2 0.7 0.1 2.2 2.4
Detailed 3 1.4 0.5 0.2 0.09 0.04 0.2 0.4

1) Measurements taken with a time step of 100 ms and 1/50th of the real gravity pull.

The light sensors are modelled in the simulator by summing up contributions of all known light
sources weighted by their inverse squared distance and some scaling factor. At present, light
shadowing is not implemented. Sound sensors are implemented in a similar way, disregarding
also in this case shadowing.

4.5. Performance Evaluations of the Different Abstraction Models.

A crucial point concerning swarmbot3d is how it performs with respect to an increasing number
of units populating its world and for different abstraction models.
To evaluate the computational load, the 4 model abstractions introduced in Section 4.3.2. were
examined. The experimental test was carried out by loading into the simulator an increasing
number of disconnected s-bots of the same kind. The simulator performance was quantified by
checking, as done with the single s-bot, the real time multiplier (RTM) value. The hardware em-
ployed in this performance evaluation was a dual 3.06GHz Xeon PC with one nVidia QuadroFx
1000 graphics card.
The readings obtained for a smooth plane terrain are reported in Table 4, where, for comparison
purposes, data is shown also for 5 connected s-bots on a plane and for 5 disconnected s-bots on a
rough terrain. All measurements were taken using a time-step of 10 ms, except for the fast model,
that, because of the large step used with it, showed instability when used on rough terrain.

5. Comparisons between Simulated and Real S-bot

This section presents a number of experiments conducted to compare the mechanical behaviour
of the various simulated s-bot models with respect to the real s-bot. A good correspondence was
found between the detailed model and the real s-bot in all cases. The medium model was able to
approximate acceptably well the detailed one in many situations, whereas the fast and simple
models were sufficient only in certain simple environments.

5.1. Motion Comparison

This experiment compares how different models differ during forward linear motion on terrains
with different levels of roughness. To do so, each simulation model was placed randomly on a
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 27

Linear motion versus terrain roughness

160

140

120
distance (cm)

100

80 medium
detailed
60

40
simple
20
fast
0
0 1 2 4 8 16 32
roughness (HR)

Figure 20. Comparison of linear motion errors of the three s-bot simulation models with respect to different
terrain roughness. The HR values correspond to descriptive values: 0 for flat, 1 for almost flat, 2 for minimally
rough, 4 for little rough, 8 for mildly rough, 16 for rough, and 32 for very rough.

terrain and then assigned a random heading. The terrain roughness was controlled within the
simulator by specifying a height range (HR) parameter. Given the reduced size of the fast model,
the terrain used for that s-bot abstraction was also scaled down by half its original size.
Figure 20 shows the motion errors which are obtained by letting each s-bot model run at
medium speed (15.24 cm/s) for 10 seconds. The vertical axis plots the projection of the travelled
distance onto the randomly selected initial direction. Depending on the terrain roughness this
distance decreases because the s-bot is not able to retain a straight course. The small differences
in distance on flat terrain are caused by calibration errors of the velocity due to differences in
the wheel diameters among the various s-bot.
Figure 20 shows that the rough terrain motion of the medium model closely follows the
behaviour of the detailed one: the constant offset is due to differences in wheel size (see above).
Both simple and fast models quickly fail to retain linear motion even on minimally rough
terrains. Since the detailed model replicates quite closely the behaviour observed on the real
robot, this suggests that also the medium one can reasonably approximate it, at least as far as
pure locomotion on rough terrain is concerned. The fast and simple models therefore are not
suitable for experiments involving very rough terrain.

5.2. Passing a Gap

In rough terrain situations, it may be the case that one s-bot or a group of s-bots have to pass
gaps or holes. We ran therefore an experiment to study how s-bots behave in these situations. To
quantify the behaviour of the different simulation models with respect to the real s-bot, two planes
were placed close to each other with a variable gap (Figure 21). We observed how each model
reacted to changes in the size of the gap and compared the results with what observed using one
real s-bot. This experiment was carried out for one s-bot and then repeated for connected s-bots.
28 Mondada et al.

Figure 21. From left to right: The 3 s-bot models while traversing a gap of 40 mm and 60 mm, respectively.

5.2.1. Single S-bot. The results of the experiment described above are reported in Table 5.
Each table entry corresponds to the modal value of 12 observations. All tests were carried out
by using a low speed of 2.8 cm/s.
By observing the table, we see that the simple model can cope with gaps up to 40 mm, starts
having trouble with gaps of 45 mm, and gets stuck with gaps of 50 mm or wider. The medium
and detailed models, instead, do not have problems with gaps up to 40 mm. Beyond this size, the
presence of the teeth on the wheels of the detailed s-bot makes a difference. This feature, in fact,
by acting as a surrogate of caterpillar tracks, mimics remarkably well the behaviour observed
on the real s-bot which gets also stuck with gaps of 55–57 mm.
The fast model was tested in a separate environment with low gravity (1/50th of the normal
one) and with a high time step value (100 ms). This model overcomes gaps of 60 mm and behaves
therefore similarly to the detailed model, although it moves in an unreal environment. Thus, it
can be used as a rough approximation of the real s-bot functional behaviour.

5.2.2. Connected S-bots. While for a single s-bot the maximum traversable gap width is
around 60 mm, a connected structure is expected to pass wider gaps, even larger than the

Table 5. Gap experiment for a single s-bot. The s-bot had to maneuver across a gap of different
width. Each row corresponds to a certain gap width and reports the results.

Width (mm) Fast1,2 Simple Medium Detailed Real

40 overcome overcome overcome overcome overcome

overcome (70%) overcome (90%)
45 overcome overcome overcome
stuck(40%) stuck(10%)
50 overcome stuck stuck overcome overcome
overcome (50%)
57 overcome stuck stuck stuck
stuck(50%)
60 overcome stuck stuck stuck stuck
65 stuck stuck stuck stuck stuck

1) Observations taken separately with 1/50th of gravity and 1/20th of mass.

2) Since the fast model is half the size of the simple model, the gaps’ widths should be divided by 2 for having a
correct comparison.
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 29

Figure 22. Gap traversal sequence using two s-bots. The same sequence is reported in the left column for the
simulated s-bots and in the right column for the real s-bots. From top to bottom: (1) the first s-bot in front of the
gap calls for help, (2) the second s-bot connects with the rigid gripper, (3) both s-bots pass the 70 mm gap, (4)
the second s-bot releases its gripper. A movie of the experiment is available at www.swarm-bots.org .

diameter of a single s-bot (about 116 mm). We ran an experiment using two connected s-bots both
in simulation and in the real world (Figure 22). The gap passing experiment was repeated, only
in simulation, using chains of three and four robots. Table 6 summarizes the observed maximum
gap widths for successful traversals. Each table entry for the simulated s-bot corresponds to the
modal value of 12 observations.
30 Mondada et al.

Figure 23. Equivalent behaviour of simulated and real s-bot with respect to a step size of 32 mm.

5.3. Climbing a Step

When navigating on rough terrain one s-bot has to confront itself with all sorts of hindrances.
Some may be overcome by getting around them, some others can instead be overcome by climbing
over. Climbing a step is one of these latter and it is important to evaluate how s-bots behave
when they have to face such an obstacle. In order to do so, two experiments were carried out:
one using a single s-bot and one using two s-bots in a connected configuration. The capability of
overcoming a step was in both cases quantified by progressively varying its height with respect
to the ground.

5.3.1. Single S-bot. In this experiment one s-bot, detailed model, placed on the ground
started to move towards a step. The experiment was performed with the s-bot moving both
forward and backward. The height of the step was varied in intervals of 1 mm.
It was observed that the maximum step height which a single detailed s-bot was able to cope
with was 15 mm when moving backward and 23 mm when moving forward (Table 7). Each table
entry for the simulated s-bot is the outcome of 12 observations. The difference between the

Table 6. Gap traversal experiment using swarm-

bot3d simulation. The values represent observed
maximum gap width for successful traversal for
different numbers of connected s-bots.

Gap Width (mm)

S-bots #
Detailed Real

1 57 57
2 100 100
3 190 not available
4 240 not available
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 31

forward and backward behaviours both in the simulated s-bot and in the real one is due to the
center of mass of the turret which is 40 mm off centered towards the gripper.
Figure 23 shows that with a step of 32 mm, which is the height at which two connected robot
can pass (see next section), one single s-bot going backward topples over both in the simulated
world and in reality.

5.3.2. Connected S-bots. This experiment was set by letting a pair of simulated s-bots,
detailed model, first connect and then navigate backward towards a step. By varying the height
of the step, it was observed that the two robots were able to pass steps up to 32 mm, in accordance
with what experienced with the real s-bot.
Figure 24 shows four stages in passing the limit step of 32 mm. First, the two s-bots approach
the step in backward formation. Second, as soon as the first robot senses the step with its rear
ground sensor, it starts lifting itself using its connected rigid gripper. During traversal, the robot
bends its rigid gripper in the opposite direction (downward) pushing itself up. Finally, the first
robot continues its backward motion and pulls in this way the second one over the step to
complete the procedure.

6. Conclusions
The work reported in this paper presented a new robot concept, called swarm-bot. Such a
concept shows to possess the three major characteristics needed for rough terrain exploration:
robustness, versatility, and all terrain navigation. These characteristics were used to discuss how
the swarm-bot concept compares with similar existing systems.
A swarm-bot, with its self-assembling capability added on top of fully autonomous robots,
opens up a new research field situated between self-reconfigurable and collective robotics. The
concept combines hardware versatility found in self-reconfigurable robots with control versatility
found in distributed control for collective robotics. This fundamental property of a swarm-bot
plays a key role in robotic operations to be performed on rough terrains and it allows to carry
out different tasks while facing complex and harsh environments usually found in exploration
missions.
A second and fundamental property of a swarm-bot is robustness, provided by distributed
hardware and control. This feature is also essential for exploration operation where the unknown
and unstable environment can cause loss of robotic units.

Table 7. Maximum step climbing height for one

s-bot moving backward (bw) and forward (fw).

Detailed S-bot Real S-bot

Step (mm)
bw fw bw fw

≤ 15 pass pass pass pass

16 fail pass fail pass
23 fail pass fail pass
24 fail fail fail fail
32 Mondada et al.

Figure 24. From left to right: the different phases of the step passing for the limit step of 32 mm. The first four
pictures refer to the simulated s-bot and the last four refer to the actual s-bots. A movie of the experiment is
available at www.swarm-bots.org .

The feasibility of the concept has been shown by presenting the construction of the first physical
prototype as well as of a 3D dynamics simulation package (swarmbot3d) complementing it. The
usefulness of this software package has been shown for accurately simulating both the kinematics
and the dynamics of a single s-bot as well as of an entire swarm-bot, for evaluating hardware
design options for different robot components, for designing swarm-bot control experiments in
3D worlds, and for investigating distributed control algorithms.
The simulation environment features modularity, multi-level modeling, and dynamic model
switching. S-bots are defined in terms of modules with each modules expressed at different
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 33

levels of detail. These characteristics make simulated s-bots fully customizable. Dynamic model
switching is unique in its kind. Such a feature gives to the simulator the power of reducing
the computational cost while keeping the accuracy of predicting a swarm-bot behaviour within
acceptable limits.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Michael Bonani, Daniel Baer, Pierre Bureau, Michel Lauria, and Vito Trianni
for their help, comments, and ideas.
This work was supported by the SWARM-BOTS project, funded by the Future and Emerging
Technologies programme (IST-FET) of the European Commission, under grant IST-2000-31010.
The information provided is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not reflect the
Community’s opinion. The Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of
data appearing in this publication. The Swiss participants to the project are supported under
grant 01.0012 by the Swiss Government. Marco Dorigo acknowledges support from the Belgian
FNRS, of which he is a Senior Research Associate, through the grant “Virtual Swarm-bots”,
contract no. 9.4515.03, and from the “ANTS” project, an “Action de Recherche Concertée”
funded by the Scientific Research Directorate of the French Community of Belgium.

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Francesco Mondada has an MSc in Microengineering and a PhD from the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne (Switzerland). He is a member of the group who
developed the Khepera mobile robot. He is co-founder of two companies: K-Team (robotics) and
Calerga (scientific software). He has been president and director of K-Team for 5 years. He is cur-
rently a senior researcher at the Autonomous System Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne. His interests include miniature robotic design, mechatronics,
bio-inspired robotic research, the development of tools to perform this research and the transfer
of robotics technology to industry.

Giovanni C. Pettinaro graduated in Computer Science at the Università di Milano, Italy, in

1989. He received the MSc in Information Technologies and the PhD in Intelligent Robotics
from the University of Edinburgh in 1992 and 1996, respectively. He joined in 1997 ABB
Corporation in Västerås, Sweden, where he worked as a consulting researcher in mechanical
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 37

design for ABB Robotics AB, Sweden. From 1998 till 2001, he worked as a researcher in mobile
robotics and artificial intelligence within the group of Mechatronics and Software Systems at
the Department of Industrial IT of ABB Corporate Research. In 2001, he joined the Istituto
Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale (IDSIA), a multi-disciplinary research institute
within the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) and the Scuola Universitaria Professionale
della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI). Since then he has worked as a researcher in robotics control
and 3D simulation within the SWARM-BOTS project. He is a member of IEEE, ACM, and
AAAS. His research interests are in mobile robotics, distributed robot control, sensor fusion,
robot architectures, robot learning, and swarm robotics.

Andrè Guignard got a Swiss federal certificate of proficiency as watchmaker and afterwards
an engineering degree in electronics in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a member of the group
who developed the Khepera mobile robot. He is co-founder of the two companies K-Team
(robotics) and CFG (electronics). He is currently senior engineer at the Autonomous System
Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne. His interests include
miniature mechatronics applied to autonomous robotics, manufacturing techniques for miniature
mechanics, and microsystems.

Ivo W. Kwee was born in Surabaya, Indonesia, in 1969. He received his Engineering degree in
Technical Physics from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, his MSc in Applied
Physics from the Hokkaido University, Japan, and his PhD in Biomedical Physics from the
University College London, UK, in 1991, 1994 and 2000 respectively. Currently he is researcher
38 Mondada et al.

at IDSIA, Switzerland, working on the SWARM-BOTS project, in particular on developing the

3D simulator and on developing learning algorithms for swarm-bot control.

Dario Floreano (MSc, 1992; PhD, 1995) is a professor of the Swiss National Science Foundation
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) where he is the director of
the Institute of Systems Engineering. His research activities include artificial neural networks,
evolutionary robotics, swarm intelligence, bio-mimetic electronics and robotics, and artificial
life. He held senior research positions at the National Research Council (CNR) in Rome, at the
University of Stirling, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and at Sony
Computer Science Laboratory in Tokyo. He published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers,
authored 2 books, and edited 3 other books. His book with Stefano Nolfi, Evolutionary Robotics,
has been reprinted by MIT Press three times since 2000. He co-organized three international
conferences and joined the program committee of more than 60 other conferences. He delivered
more than 100 invited talks all over the world to academic, industrial, and public audiences. He
is on the editorial board of the journals Neural Networks, Genetic Programming and Evolvable
Machines, Adaptive Behavior, Artificial Life, Connection Science, and IEEE Transactions on
Evolutionary Computation. He is also co-founder and co-director of the International Society
for Artificial Life (Inc., USA), member of the Board of Governors of the International Society
of Artificial Neural Networks (Inc., USA), and member of various international societies. He
frequently serves as advisor to the Research Division of the European Commission, to the U.S.
National Science Foundation, and to other governmental and private institutions. He aims at
building autonomous machines that have life-like properties, that is, machines which are able to
reproduce, adapt, and evolve without human intervention.

Jean-Louis Deneubourg received his doctoral degree in Sciences (Chemistry) from the Uni-
versité Libre de Bruxelles in 1979. From 1980 to 1989 he was a research fellow at the Service
de Chimie Physique and at CENOLI, Université Libre de Bruxelles. From 1989, he has been
a researcher of the FNRS, at CENOLI. From 2003, he is, with C. Detrain, co-director of the
Department of Social Ecology. He is the author or co-author of around 180 papers, the coeditor of
two books (From individual to collective behavior in social insects with J.M. Pasteels Birkhäuser;
 Swarm-Bot: a New Distributed Robotic Concept 39

Information Processing in Social Insects with C. Detrain, & J.M. Pasteels, Birkhäuser) and the
co-author of one book (Self-Organization in biological systems with S. Camazine, N. Franks,
J. Sneyd, E. Bonabeau & G. Theraulaz, Princeton, in press). He is (was) member of the
editorial board of numerous international journals and was involved in the organization of many
international conferences. His research concerns the collective intelligence in animal societies and
their application to artificial and human systems. He has developed integrated experimental
and theoretical tools for the study of complexity and self-organisation in biological systems.
Current research projects deal with decision-making, information flow, building behavior and
pattern formation in insect societies and in group-living organisms. Offshoots in applied research
include collective robotics and transportation systems. He was awarded two prizes of the Bel-
gian Academy and, in 2004, the french Prize Goeffroy Saint-Hilaire for his work on collective
intelligence.

Stefano Nolfi is a senior researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies
of the National Research Council (CNR) in Rome, where he leads the Laboratory of Artificial
Life and Robotics. He is also associate professor at Lumsa University in Rome. His research
interests are in the field of neuro-ethological studies of adaptive behavior in natural and artificial
agents and include: evolutionary robotics, artificial life, complex systems, neural networks, and
genetic algorithms. The main tenets underlying his work are that behavioural strategies and
neural mechanisms are understood better when an organism (living or artificial) is caught in
the act, that is, when one considers situated and embodied agents in their interaction with the
environment; and that to understand how natural agents behave and to build useful artificial
agents one should study how living organisms change, phylogenetically and ontogenetically, as
they adapt to their environment. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and a
book on Evolutionary Robotics.

Luca Maria Gambardella is Research Director at IDSIA. His major research interests are
in the area of optimization, simulation, robotics learning and adaptation, applied to both aca-
demic and real-world problems. In particular he has studied and developed several ant colony
optimisation algorithms to solve scheduling and routing problems. In these domains, the best-
40 Mondada et al.

known solutions for many benchmark instances have been computed. He is responsible for IDSIA
robotics projects. He has led several research and industrial projects both at national (Swiss)
and European level.

Marco Dorigo received the Laurea (Master of Technology) degree in industrial technologies
engineering in 1986 and the doctoral degree in information and systems electronic engineering
in 1992 from Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, and the title of Agrégé de l’Enseignement
Supérieur, from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in 1995. From 1992 to 1993 he was
a research fellow at the International Computer Science Institute of Berkeley, CA. In 1993 he
was a NATO-CNR fellow, and from 1994 to 1996 a Marie Curie fellow. Since 1996 he has been a
tenured researcher of the FNRS, the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, and a research
director of IRIDIA, the artificial intelligence laboratory of the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
He is the inventor of the ant colony optimization metaheuristic and one of the founders of the
swarm intelligence research field. Its current research interests include metaheuristics for discrete
optimization, swarm intelligence and swarm robotics. Dr. Dorigo is an Associate Editor for the
journals: Cognitive Systems Research, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE
Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, and Journal of Heuristics. He is a member of the
Editorial Board of numerous international journals, including: Adaptive Behavior, AI Communi-
cations, Artificial Life, Evolutionary Computation, Information Sciences, and Journal of Genetic
Programming and Evolvable Machines. He is the author of three books: Robot Shaping, MIT
Press, 1998; Swarm Intelligence, Oxford University Press, 1999; and Ant Colony Optimization,
MIT Press, 2004. In 1996 he was awarded the Italian Prize for Artificial Intelligence and in 2003
the Marie Curie Excellence Award for his work on ant colony optimization and ant algorithms.