Miniaturized Robotic Swarms
Developed coordination algorithms for miniaturized robot swarms in collaboration with MIT, focusing on decentralized decision-making and emergent collective behavior.
- ▸Implemented decentralized consensus algorithms for swarm coordination without central controller
- ▸Designed communication protocols for bandwidth-constrained inter-robot messaging
- ▸Simulated and validated with physical robots — 50-unit swarm achieving target formations
- ▸Collaboration with MIT's Distributed Robotics Lab
Overview
This project explored decentralized coordination algorithms for swarms of miniaturized robots, developed in collaboration with MIT's Distributed Robotics Lab. The core challenge: how can dozens of simple, resource-constrained robots achieve complex collective behaviors without any central controller?
What I Built
- Decentralized consensus algorithms for formation control
- Lightweight communication protocol for bandwidth-constrained radios
- Simulation environment for validating algorithms before physical deployment
- Integration with physical robot platform (custom Arduino-based bots)
Technical Details
Key challenges included handling unreliable wireless communication, limited computational resources on each robot, and ensuring the system degrades gracefully when individual robots fail.
Results
Successfully demonstrated 50-unit swarm achieving target formations with >90% accuracy in simulation and 10-unit physical validation.
What I Learned
Working at the intersection of distributed systems and physical hardware taught me that theory and practice diverge significantly — algorithms that work perfectly in simulation face unexpected challenges with real sensors and actuators.