Swarming robots — enhancing the communication in flying robot systems

Wouldn't it be nice if each household had an electronic helper or if robots could fulfill the tasks that are too dangerous or troublesome for humans? Things that are taken for granted in movies such as the Bicentennial Man or I-Robot are still very futuristic scenarios in reality.

Paolo Robuffo Giordano investigates the fundamental aspects necessary for the relevant technical development at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. He and his team mainly work with flying multi-robot systems, which receive instructions from a human user and are then able to fulfill the details of the task autonomously.

Paolo Robuffo Giordano is the project leader of the human robot interaction group in the Department Human Perception, Cognition and Action of Heinrich Bülthoff at the MPI for Biological Cybernetics.

His team works with quadrocopters, small flying robots generally referred to as" unmanned aerial vehicles" (UAVs) by scientists. Navigated by a human operator, four or more of these UAVs, which are approximately 40cm in diameter, perform local tasks maintaining a programmed, spatial configuration.

If the UAVs are instructed to fly forward in a programmed formation, they do so while avoiding obstacles autonomously. While flying, the robots provide the human operator with sensory feedback - visual, proprioceptive, tactile and auditory, depending on the equipment and programming, which maximises the operator's awareness.

If an object is in the way, the control will be aggravated in that specific direction until the robots have overcome the obstacle. "It's like actually flying against a wall'', Robuffo Giordano explains. The robots autonomously keep track of each other using cameras and regulate their position in relation to one another. The human operator can track the UAVs on his monitor."