Swarm robotics has experienced a rapid expansion in recent years, primarily fueled by\nspecialized multi-robot systems developed to achieve dedicated collective actions. These\nspecialized platforms are, in general, designed with swarming considerations at the front\nand center. Key hardware and software elements required for swarming are often deeply\nembedded and integrated with the particular system. However, given the noticeable\nincrease in the number of low-cost mobile robots readily available, practitioners and\nhobbyists may start considering to assemble full-fledged swarms by minimally retrofitting\nsuch mobile platforms with a swarm-enabling technology. Here, we report one possible\nembodiment of such a technologyââ?¬â?an integrated combination of hardware and softwareââ?¬â?\ndesigned to enable the assembly and the study of swarming in a range of general-\npurpose robotic systems. This is achieved by combining a modular and transferable\nsoftware toolbox with a hardware suite composed of a collection of low-cost and off-theshelf\ncomponents. The developed technology can be ported to a relatively vast range of\nrobotic platformsââ?¬â?such as land and surface vehiclesââ?¬â?with minimal changes and high\nlevels of scalability. This swarm-enabling technology has successfully been implemented\non two distinct distributed multi-robot systems, a swarm of mobile marine buoys and a\nteam of commercial terrestrial robots. We have tested the effectiveness of both of these\ndistributed robotic systems in performing collective exploration and search scenarios,\nas well as other classical cooperative behaviors. Experimental results on different swarm\nbehaviors are reported for the two platforms in uncontrolled environments and without\nany supporting infrastructure. The design of the associated software library allows for a\nseamless switch to other cooperative behaviorsââ?¬â?e.g., leaderââ?¬â??follower heading consensus\nand collision avoidance, and also offers the possibility to simulate newly designed\ncollective behaviors prior to their implementation onto the platforms. This feature greatly\nfacilitates behavior-based design, i.e., the design of new swarming behaviors, with the\npossibility to simulate them prior to physically test them.
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