All-terrain Robot Platform for Sparse Swarm Applications

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Robots swarms are teams of robots that collaborate to perform an assigned task. However, a common feature of existing swarms is the underlying assumption that the robots act in close proximity to each other. As a consequence, existing swarms are ill suited for real world outdoor applications: the required density of robots is unrealistic, undesirable, and unaffordable over the area to be covered in any potential real application scenario.The aim of this project is to bridge the gap from the extensive swarm robot research carried out in simulation and with table-top robots to practical applications such as environmental monitoring, sensing for precision agriculture, perimeter security, and infrastructure monitoring.Key to bridging this gap is the concept of a sparse swarm in which the robots coordinate over long distances (hundreds of meters), but do never physically meet to execute their tasks. The specific formal constraints that arise from this situation require a different perspective in algorithm development and open up distinct research opportunities. To guide the constraints of the theoretical work and validate its practicality, a robot platform is required that combines long endurance all-terrain capability with long-range communication at a cost that allows for experiments with groups of robots.This PhD project will exploit state-of-the-art battery and brushless motor technology with recently introduced low-cost long-range communication technology (LoRaWAN) to develop an affordable open-hardware platform for an autonomous ground vehicle targeted at the challenging environment of forest grounds and characterise its performance in such an environment.