Centralized User Interfaces of Robots

Centralized input allows the swarm to be controlled by a single user, using the gateway robot to provide connectivity between the user’s computer and the Swarm. The VT100 terminal display allows the user to send commands to an individual robot or to the entire Swarm. Simple graphical output is also possible, but limitations of the VT100 display make this interface best for input.

Commercial-off-the shelf video game controllers are also an excellent hardware input devices for some applications. In particular, the controller designed for the Sony Play Stations are high quality, and simple to interface to the robots. This approach allows one or more users to directly control individual robots, and through group behaviors, the entire Swarm. These controllers are ideal for demonstrations and classroom lessons.

The graphical user interface displays real-time telemetry data, detailed internal state, local neighbor positioning, and global robot positioning. Its design is inspired by the graphical user interfaces (GUI) of real-time strategy video games such as StarCraft and WarCraft. Games like these challenge the user to direct an army of individual units to victory. Although it is common to have over 100 units on each team, elegant user interfaces make it simple for the user to control individual units, groups, or the entire army.