Energy Efficient HW/SW Integration in an Autonomous Microrobot

Abstract

This paper addresses the integration of HW and SW for a 3 mm x 3 mm x 3 mm autonomous microrobot called I-SWARM. The robot is intended to be part of a swarm of up to 1000 members for studying large scale swarm behaviour. It presents an overall architecture of the robot and the SW used. The robot is the smallest autonomous robot of the world, equipped with a vibrating contact sensor, a four directional infrared communication module, vibrating legs and an ASIC. The software is comprised of a hardware abstraction layer and an interpreter for a specially designed control language.