swarm robotics

Bit off topic from combat robotics. Just starting my 5th year uni group project. The project is looking at swarm robotics and carrying out basic experiments to get a swarm (3 to 5 machines) to complete various tasks.

I was wondering if anyone here would happen to have any experience in the topic or could point me in the direction of some hobby bot kits with the ability to be programmed, have a number of inputs and outputs and communicate with one another? Got no experience in the topic atm so any help would be appriciated! :)

I'm no expert in this but i have seen it done with light sensors that detects an object by relfectng a infarred light from it so programming it to turn away from the object if that made any sense ;P so you could make it follow a course

I think the Surveyor robots (http://osbots.com/shop/product/Surveyor/) have some of that functionality, I definitely saw a video a while back of four or five communicating and doing something as a swarm. Robotics isn't really my field though I'm afraid (geology is :P)

my local robotics club did a project like this a while ago, all of the bots were areduino baed adn used 2 360 modded servos, they onlyever got to the stage of bumping into things and just avoiding walls but you could do so much more with a few xbee modules. The bots are called box bots and are all laser cut out of acrylic. http://www.botbuilder.co.uk/store/index ... ucts_id=57 The guy that makes em is called steve by the way.

The arduinoes need to be programmed in C++, im not sure how happy you are with programming but if youve never done it before there is tons and tons of stuff on the internet.

hope this helps and good luck with your project :)