Open Research Europe presents an interview with Darko Bozhinoski, a co-author of ‘Towards an integrated automatic design process for robot swarms’ in this month’s Research spotlight.
This article was nominated by Dr Veronica Iacovacci, the Guest Advisor for the Nanoscale Magnetics Collection:
“The paper contributes to the standardization process needed to bring robotics closer to daily applications and to allow the translation of results from the labs to the real world. In this direction, the authors particularly focus on swarm robotics by defining a language for the specification of missions to be performed by the swarm and providing a tool to transform a mission specification into an objective function needed for optimized design.”
Dr Veronica Iacovacci
How would you summarize your Research Article?
In our Research Article, we introduce an automatic process that allows the programming of a robot swarm in a natural and straightforward way (a robot swarm can be described as groups of robots that work in coordination).
The process detailed in the article requires input of a description of the mission to be accomplished by the swarm, which is provided using an intuitive written language. The process then automatically programs the robots so that they can be deployed in their target environment without the need for any manual intervention. To demonstrate this automatic process, we showcase it on three missions that are typically studied in the field of swarm robotics.
What inspired you to investigate this?
We believe that robot swarms will be part of our daily life in the near future and it will be necessary to have methods that allow the general public to instruct these robot swarms so that they perform the required tasks. Our work is the first significant step in this direction.
What were the outcomes of your research?
The outcome is twofold:
- We developed a new language to instruct a swarm of robots to perform a desired mission
- We developed a new system that automatically programs the robots to perform this mission
Why is open research important to you and your co-authors?
Open research is important to us because we believe that open science is the most effective way to have a real-world impact on society. Science is a collective endeavor: it is fundamental to share ideas and results in an open, free, and immediate way.
What motivated you to publish with Open Research Europe?
We like the philosophy and the publishing model of Open Research Europe. We feel that the traditional publishing model needs to be revised to follow the FAIR principles (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) and we believe that Open Research Europe is a promising alternative in that direction.
What are your next steps?
We’re still exploring ways to program robot swarms automatically and to describe desired behaviors in a natural and straightforward way. Our final goal is to have robot swarms that can be easily programmed by users and that can efficiently and reliably perform complex missions.
Read the full Research Article today on Open Research Europe to explore the study and findings.
