'Honeybee' Colias robots replicate swarm behaviour

Colias with grasshopper (for scale).

Credit: Image courtesy of University of Lincoln

Computer scientists have created a low-cost, autonomous micro-robot which in large numbers can replicate the behaviour of swarming honeybees Colias, named after a genus of butterfly, is an open-platform system that can be used to investigate collective behaviours and be applied to swarm applications.

Robotic swarms that take inspiration from nature have become a topic of fascination for robotics researchers, whose aim is to study the autonomous behaviour of large numbers of simple robots in order to find technological solutions to common complex tasks.

Due to the hardware complexities and cost of creating robot hardware platforms, current research in swarm robotics is mostly performed by simulation software.

However, the simulation of large numbers of these robots in robotic swarm software applications is often inaccurate due to the poor modelling of external conditions.



Colias was created by a team of scientists led by the University of Lincoln, UK, with Tsinghua University in China.

It has been proven to be feasible as an autonomous platform, effectively replicating a honeybee swarm.

Its small size (4cm diameter) and fast motion (35cm/s) means it can be used in fast-paced swarm scenarios over large areas.

In comparison to other mobile robots which are utilized in swarm robotic research, Colias is a low-cost platform, costing around £25, making the replication of swarm behaviour in large numbers of robots more feasible and economical for researchers.

Farshad Arvin, from the School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, was part of the research team which developed Colias.

He said: "The platform must be able to imitate swarm behaviours found in nature, such as insects, birds and fish. Colias has been designed as a complete platform with supporting software development tools for robotics education and research."

Farshad Arvin

"This concept allows for the coordination of simple physical robots in order to cooperatively perform tasks."

"The decentralised control of robotic swarms can be achieved by providing well-defined interaction rules for each individual robot."

"Colias has been used in a bio-inspired scenario, showing that it is extremely responsive to being used to investigate collective behaviours."

"Our aim was to imitate the bio-inspired mechanisms of swarm robots and to enable all research groups, even with limited funding, to perform such research with real robots."

Long-range infrared proximity sensors allow the robot to communicate with its direct neighbours at a range of 0.5cm to 2m.

A combination of three short-range sensors and an independent processor enables the individual robots to detect obstacles.

A similar but more complex mechanism has been found in locust vision, where a specific neuron called the 'lobula giant movement detector' reacts to objects approaching the insects' eyes.

Co-author Professor Shigang Yue, also from Lincoln's School of Computer Science, previously created a computerised system which supports the autonomous navigation of mobile robots based on the locust's unique visual system.

This earlier research, published in the International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems (2013), could provide the blueprint for the development of highly accurate vehicle collision sensors, surveillance technology and even aid video game programming.

The next step for the Colias research team is to work on an extension of the vision module using a faster computer processor to implement bio-inspired vision mechanisms.

Full details of their research have been published in the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems.

Journal Reference:
Farshad Arvin, John Murray, Chun Zhang, Shigang Yue. Colias: An Autonomous Micro Robot for Swarm Robotic Applications. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, 2014; 1 DOI: 10.5772/58730

Bluefin 21 Artemis autonomous underwater vehicle to search for MH370

This handout image taken on April 1, 2014 and received on April 8, 2014 from the US Navy shows the Bluefin 21 Artemis autonomous underwater vehicle being hoisted back on board the Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield

A torpedo-shaped mini-sub could provide conclusive proof that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 crashed into the Indian Ocean, but the task is set to push the machine to its limits.

The Bluefin-21, a 493 centimetre (16.2 feet) long sonar device is expected to be deployed to the ocean floor in the days ahead to look for debris from Boeing 777, which vanished on March 8.

Angus Houston, who heads the agency coordinating the eight-nation hunt, said that after more work to detect "pings" consistent with those issued from aircraft black boxes the autonomous submersible could be deployed in the remote area off western Australia where the search is focused.

Once in the water, if the device detects something unusual using the sonar, it can be brought to the surface and sent down again equipped with a video camera to provide the visual evidence of a crash.

"You can't have the side sonar and the camera down there together, it's one or the other," the retired Air Chief Marshal Houston told reporters.

"We will continue sortie after sortie until such time as we pick up evidence that there's something unusual on the ocean floor. We would then send down the camera.

"What we're after is wreckage, a debris field as people would say."

The device was designed for offshore surveying, search and salvage operations, archaeology and exploration, oceanography and mine countermeasures and its modest size makes it easy to transport.

But it will be a smallish device operating in a vast ocean search zone, and Houston said it would take a long time to find anything without more information about a possible crash site.

"It's a long, painstaking process, particularly when you start searching the depths of the ocean floor," he said.

The Bluefin 21 has not yet been sent down because it can not be deployed while the US Navy's towed pinger locator, the device attached to the Australian vessel Ocean Shield which had picked up the sounds, is in use.

But once the batteries in the black box recorders expire, something which is expected to occur in coming days given they have a life-span of about 30 days, the Bluefin 21 is expected to be deployed.

The device, which weighs 750 kilograms, can operate at a depth of up to 4,500 metres—the depth of the ocean floor where the pings were detected.

"It can't go deeper than that, so it's quite incredible how finely balanced all of this is," Houston said.

The US Navy has provided specialist Navy and civilian equipment operators who will join the ship's crew and Australian Defence Force specialists to deploy the equipment, authorities said.

NASA's Mars Curiosity MSL debuts autonomous navigation

This mosaic of images from the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the scene from the rover's position on the 376th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Aug. 27, 2013). (Click on the image to see bigger version)

The images were taken right after Curiosity completed the first drive during which it used autonomous navigation on unknown ground. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has used autonomous navigation for the first time, a capability that lets the rover decide for itself how to drive safely on Mars.

This latest addition to Curiosity's array of capabilities will help the rover cover the remaining ground en route to Mount Sharp, where geological layers hold information about environmental changes on ancient Mars.

The capability uses software that engineers adapted to this larger and more complex vehicle from a similar capability used by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which is also currently active on Mars.

Using autonomous navigation, or autonav, Curiosity can analyze images it takes during a drive to calculate a safe driving path. This enables it to proceed safely even beyond the area that the human rover drivers on Earth can evaluate ahead of time.

On Tuesday, Aug. 27, Curiosity successfully used autonomous navigation to drive onto ground that could not be confirmed safe before the start of the drive.

This was a first for Curiosity. In a preparatory test last week, Curiosity plotted part of a drive for itself, but kept within an area that operators had identified in advance as safe.

"Curiosity takes several sets of stereo pairs of images, and the rover's computer processes that information to map any geometric hazard or rough terrain," said Mark Maimone, rover mobility engineer and rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"The rover considers all the paths it could take to get to the designated endpoint for the drive and chooses the best one."

The drive on Tuesday, the mission's 376th Martian day, or "sol," took Curiosity across a depression where ground-surface details had not been visible from the location where the previous drive ended.

The drive included about 33 feet (10 meters) of autonomous navigation across hidden ground as part of a day's total drive of about 141 feet (43 meters).

"We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between," said JPL's John Wright, a rover driver.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity left the "Glenelg" area on July 4, 2013, on a "rapid transit route" to the entry point for the mission's next major destination, the lower layers of Mount Sharp. 

As of Aug. 27, 2013, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has driven about 0.86 mile (1.39 kilometers) since leaving Glenelg, with about 4.46 miles (7.18 kilometers) remaining to get to the entry point. 

The rover's drive on Aug. 27, the 376th sol (Martian day) of the mission, was the first Curiosity drive using the rover's autonomous navigation capability to safely drive beyond the area that rover drivers on Earth could evaluate from images before the drive. 

The rover can analyze stereo images that it takes during the drive and choose the best path to continue driving. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Curiosity is nearly two months into a multi-month trek from the "Glenelg" area, where it worked for the first half of 2013, to an entry point for the mission's major destination: the lower layers of a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mound called Mount Sharp.

The latest drive brought the distance traveled since leaving Glenelg to 0.86 mile (1.39 kilometers). The remaining distance to the Mount Sharp entry point is about 4.46 miles (7.18 kilometers) along a "rapid transit route."

That route was plotted on the basis of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The actual driving route, which will be based on images from Curiosity's own cameras, could be longer or shorter.

Curiosity's science team has picked a few waypoints along the rapid transit route to Mount Sharp where driving may be suspended for a few days for science.

The rover has about 0.31 mile (500 meters) left to go before reaching the first of these waypoints, which appears from orbiter images to offer exposed bedrock for inspection.

"Each waypoint represents an opportunity for Curiosity to pause during its long journey to Mount Sharp and study features of local interest," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

"These features are geologically interesting, based on HiRISE images, and they lie very close to the path that provides the most expeditious route to the base of Mount Sharp.

We'll study each for several sols, perhaps selecting one for drilling if it looks sufficiently interesting."

After landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity drove eastward to the Glenelg area, where it accomplished the mission's major science objective of finding evidence for an ancient wet environment that had conditions favorable for microbial life.

The rover's route is now southwestward. At Mount Sharp, in the middle of Gale Crater, scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved.

Autonomous Marine Robots detect and identify endangered whales

Dave Fratantoni, a scientist in the WHOI Physical Oceanography Department, does some work on the whale-detecting glider (Photo: Nick Woods, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Every year between November and January, endangered North Atlantic right whales are thought to use an area off the coast of Maine known as the Outer Fall as a breeding ground.

They are “thought to” because the ocean conditions at that time of year can make it difficult to locate them.

Two autonomous marine robots called gliders have now been used as a real time whale-detection system for researchers and to warn boats in the area to slow down to avoid striking the marine mammals.

Employed as part of an oceanographic research project led by Mark Baumgartner and Dave Fratantoni from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the two torpedo-shaped ocean-going robots are about six foot (1.8 m) long and come equipped with an iridium satellite antenna, underwater microphone, digital acoustic monitoring (DMON) instrument and specialized software that allows them to detect, classify and tally calls from four species of baleen whales – sei, fin, humpback, and right.

Used by oceanographers for around a decade, the gliders are able to move up, down and laterally through the water in a sawtooth pattern by changing their buoyancy and using their short wings to provide lift. They are also battery-powered, making them very quiet.

The two gliders were deployed on November 12 and surveyed the area for two weeks, surfacing every two hours to get a GPS position and transmit data to shore via satellite.

The scientific team arrived on November 28 with the gliders continuing their survey operations for another week, alerting the scientists to the presence of whales in the research area in real time.

“We found our first right whale on the first day that we were surveying in decent weather conditions because the gliders were up there doing the leg work for us, to tell us where the animals were in real time,” says Baumgartner.