Swarm Robotics: A Research Project With High School Students As Active Participants

Abstract

This paper is concerned with an educational project to provide a rich research experience on swarm robotics to high school students. A group of three mobile robots (the popular Lego NXT) was used to implement a 'search and rescue' operation. A bio-inspired global optimization technique called particle swarm optimization (PSO) was used as the principal algorithm. Each robot was placed in pre-defined positions with a target position corresponding to a single target. The robots were programmed to search in spirals until the target was found by any one of the robots. Once the target was detected the robots attempted to reach the target using the PSO algorithm. Results were encouraging. The high school students were wholly responsible for all programming and experimental tasks and got an immersive experience of a real-time cuttingedge engineering research application.