A configurable swarm robot platform for remote sensing applications

Swarm robotics is a growing area in the field of mobile robotics, however limited work has been done in the area of applications for swarm robotics. Several applications such as remote environmental sensing, security, and search and rescue are several immediate applications of swarm robotics. However, this field suffers from a lack of complete swarm robot platforms, which includes: a computational platform capable of hosting robust control and communication systems, a communications and data exchange model capable of robust data transfer in a dynamic network, and finally an easy to use and modify human-machine interface. Using the environmental sensing application to generate a basic set of criteria, a complete system is described, which includes these components in a flexible manner that can be easily modified to fit arbitrary swarm robotics applications, specifically those which involve a remote sensing problem.