OpenKilo: A Truly Open-Source Kilobot Design Revision that Aids Repair and Extensibility
Physical robot platforms are an important tool in swarm robotics research, allowing algorithms to be validated and optimised under realistic conditions. The Kilobot is a widely used platform that was originally designed to be cheap and simple enough for r
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School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK [email protected] 2 Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK [email protected] 3 Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK [email protected]
Abstract. Physical robot platforms are an important tool in swarm robotics research, allowing algorithms to be validated and optimised under realistic conditions. The Kilobot is a widely used platform that was originally designed to be cheap and simple enough for research labs to produce themselves. However, existing designs are neither truly open-source nor amenable to repair. We present a revised Kilobot hardware design that specifically aids repair via hand-soldering while remaining compatible with previous designs. Our design was produced using open-source ECAD (Electronic Computer-Aided Design) software, and is freely available online. We hope that the editable schematic and printed circuit board (PCB) design will be of use to future Kilobot projects, and will contribute to the accessibility of swarm robotics in general. Keywords: Kilobot
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· Swarm robotics · Open-source hardware
Introduction
The Kilobot is a low-cost robot platform that was originally designed to test swarm algorithms on hundreds or thousands of physical robots [17] – something that was previously infeasible due to the size and cost of other robot platforms available at the time. Since its publication in 2010 [18] the Kilobot has become one of the most widely used swarm robotics platforms, particularly for large swarms [4,7,10,24]. This can be attributed to both its commercial availability and supporting documentation – software tools and code examples are available to assist those starting their own projects [19], including simple collective behaviours such as phototaxis, dispersion, and orbiting. The Kilobot platform is supported by established robot simulators including ARGoS [14] and V-REP [16], as well as the bespoke simulator Kilombo [6]. Systems for extending the capabilities of the Kilobot platform via virtual sensors c Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Mohammad et al. (Eds.): TAROS 2020, LNAI 12228, pp. 345–356, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63486-5_36
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and actuators have also been developed – namely Kilogrid [2,23] and ARK [15], enabling the implementation of a wide range of experiments. Kilobots are similar to Droplets [8] and Zooids [9], and represent a valuable asset for the swarm robotics community due to their proven experimental utility. While Kilobot robots are commercially available from K-Team1 , their high retail price makes the commercial purchase of large robot swarms prohibitively expensive for many institutions. Consequently, the research community has begun to develop alternative designs that can be produced inexpensively, utilising varying degrees of manufacturing automation. This paper presents a Kilobot hardware design revision, OpenKilo, that lends itself to ease of rep
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