LumiBots: making emergence graspable in a swarm of robots

Emergence is a concept that is not easy to grasp, since it contradicts our idea of central control and planning. In this work, we use a swarm of robots as a tangible tool to visualize interactions as the underlying principle of emergence. We utilize phosphorescent sheet (i.e. glow-in-the-dark foil) that can be activated with UV LEDs to visualize local information transfer between the robots in form of fading luminescent trails. The robots are specially designed to be both easy-to-understand and easy-to-build. They are a lowcost kit that can allow non-professionals to explore collective behaviour. By playing with the robots, they can get an understanding of complex systems such as emergence or Ant Colony Optimization algorithms in an automatic and playful way. Keywords Swarm robotics, trail pheromones, Ant Colony Optimization, tangible, visualization, phosphorescence, glow-in-the-dark, Arduino, education

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ACMDIS
• Authors: Mey Lean Kronemann, Verena Vanessa Hafner
• Keywords: ACMDIS 2010, Ant Colony Optimization, Human Computer Interaction, Local Information Transfer, Robots