CYCLOP System: Motion Control of Multi-Robots through a Single Eye

We propose a way to control several robots at a glance by using visual data provided by a single vision camera. Position and orientation of the group is given by a main robot (a master) which has a very simple camera on its top. This robot also has two encoders for determining its positioning related to the origin. The other (slave) robots have no position/orientation sensors as camera/angle-sensors. Their only local sensing capabilities are light (infra-red) and bump sensors. They have a top mark that allows the master discovering their orientation and positioning through the vision software. All robots can be controled by using a control software running in a host computer, through a communication protocol also developed in this work. The robots have some software tools running inside a local processor and memory so they can perform some tasks autonomously, as obstacle avoidance. The main goal is to control all slave robots to stay inside the field of view of the master. With this behavior, the master can have control over the slaves position and can eventually send some of them to perform usefull tasks in certain places, inside its field of view.