Components Chassis Electronics Informatics Transport, safety, and charging Box Project Management Optional features
Project description Submodules Swarm Robotics Sciency project description and related work

Puzzling Robots

Project description

What is the project? Basically a bunch of robotic cubes with a button. Each one looks like this ->

Alone, each robot can only control an LED. Together, they form form a team that you can play with or use to train your movement coordination, reaction, concentration, or memory. The goal is to support medical/ psychological challenges such as dementia, Autism, or ADHD that struggle in precisely these fields..

Sketch of a single robot and connection to the outside. Made with Krita.

How to use it

To use them place them on a flat surface. It works best if they are positioned in a grid pattern near to each other as shown in the picture below:

The RFID module only allows limits range connectivity represented by the circles around the squares. The robot with the green range circle would establish communication, the ones in red would not. Left: recommended constellation. Made with Libre Office.

Now, hold one of the cards and hold them close to the side to one (or several depending on the game you choose) robot. If you use several cards, the robots will eventually agree on one game, it might just take some time.

Available games (will be implemented soon):

How it works

Project Management

Please go to the project management storytime page for more details.

  • Explain project and set up documentation website
  • Document as you go
Requirements:
  • Explain the project to a five year old
Current status:
Block diagram of puzzling Robots V3. Made with Draw io.

Programming

  • Research, compare, and program communication (+ communication propagation) robot <-> robot
  • Develop and keep relative coordinate system algorithm
  • Program input communication card -> robot
  • Control LED
  • Read button input
  • Program games
Requirements:
  • Keep it simple
Current status:
State diagram. Made with Draw IO

Please go to the IT storytime page for more details.

Electronics

  • Do research and comparison Wireless Communication options, define requirements, and design circuit for chosen communication technology
  • Do research and compare possible processing options. Comparison to microcontroller alternatives. Define requirements and design development board for chosen microcontroller
  • Do research and compare user interaction options and design the circuit
  • Define requirements and design power management circuit for each module. Compare different types of batteries
  • Define requirements and design user interaction circuit
  • Produce, solder, and test PCB designs
  • Incorporate all designs into one PCB for simplicity
Requirements:
  • Design in separate modules for easier debugging
Current status: V3
buildingBlockSchematic
General electric building block schematic V3. Made with KiCad EDA

Please go to the electronics storytime page for more details.

Chassis

  • Find requirements and create a basic design for the structure surrounding the electronics based on them
  • Research methods to connect components from the chassis
  • Adapt sizes of chassis to electrical circuit
  • Design lock to charging pad
  • Design upper part of the structure for pre fabricated arcade buttons
  • Slide in charging mechanism
Requirements:
  • Optimize for 3D printing
  • Minimize outside impact and vibrations on electronic components
Current status: V5
V5 chassis for puzzling robots. Made with FreeCAD

Please go to the chassis storytime page for more details.

Components

  • Research and test alternatives to arcade buttons
  • Create BOMs for everything
  • Make a cost estimate. Use Digikey as primary online shop and try to stick to FAB Inventory.
Requirements:
  • As cheap as possible
Current status:

Please go to the components storytime page for more details.

Transport, storage, and charging box

  • Design modular box
  • Do research and design circuit to distribute electricity to all charger modules
Requirements:
  • Needs to fit in puzzling robots and cushion them from impacts
  • Easy open and close and carry option
  • Stable enough to carry puzzling Robots
  • Open Connection to charge robots
Current status:
Video of modular box. Made with Cuttle, KiCad EDA, and FreeCAD

Please go to the box storytime page for more details.

Optional features

  • Write a program for them to come to consensus when several RFID cards are read. BEECLUST
  • Make a nice design for the RFID cards
  • Transport, secure, charging box should be waterproof
  • Blocks allows for easy carrying and stacking
  • Inductive charging
  • Add a speaker
Preview
Drafts for RFID card designs. made with Incscape

Please go to the optional features storytime page for more details.

(Super short) Intro into Swarm Robotics

There are many definitions of this discipline. This is how I see it (quote):

Robotics aims to solve problems by developing robots specific to that task. A swarm or school is a term that is often used to describe a large number of insects or fish working in a coordinated manner to achieve a common goal. These swarms usually consist of the same species of animals that can only use their bodies, appendages, and environment to communicate and work as a team to survive. The members of the swarm tend to be relatively small, without many outstanding capacities if isolated from their peers. Swarm robotics is a combination of both of these ideas: many relatively simple, similar robots working as a team to reach a common goal using only local interactions as sources of information. [...] Because of this, swarm robotics is typically characterized as being scalable, flexible, and robust.

For more details and background knowledge please read my State Of The Art Review Of Swarm Robotics from 2024.

Examples:

Kilobots, Swarmanoid, Blinkybots Party, Swarm Robotics in Agriculture, Swarm Robotics for Mars, Swarm Robotics for taking underwater measurements, Swarm Robotics for biological research, Little cubes moving objects, Someones Youtube compilation of cool Swarm Robotic Projects,

Sciency project description and related work

Goal: Develop a concept, design, and prototype for modular building blocks (see (1), (3), (4), and (5) for examples) that can be manually connected and disconnected. These modules will include removable connections for information propagation (see (6), (7), (8) for reference) and operate using swarm robotics principles (9). The system's functionality will be adjustable via a user interface.

I will focus on static or 2D systems to ensure feasibility. The primary objective is to create a modular system of up to 10 simple, interactive modules that can be physically assembled, tested, and used in games such as puzzles, reaction-based tasks, or memory challenges.

Use Case: Exploring gaming opportunities, including puzzles, serious games, and reaction-based activities, using modular robotic systems. Medical use for game treatment of depression, dementia, etc. Might be useful to train with ADHD or Autism symptoms.

Nickname: “Puzzling Robots” (puzz rob)

Target audience: ages 3-5 and 60+ (with or without described criteria)


(1) Kyle Gilpin, Ara Knaian, and Daniela Rus (2010) Robot Pebbles: One Centimeter Modules for Programmable Matter through Self-Disassembly, IEEE

(2) Kirstin Petersen, Radhika Nagpal, Justin Werfel (2012) TERMES: An Autonomous Robotic System forThree-Dimensional Collective Construction, MIT Press

(3) Bhalla and Bentley (2012) Programming Self-Assembling Systems via Physically Encoded Information Morphogenetic Engineering Understanding Complex Systems, p. 157-188

(4) Gross and Dorigo (2008) Self-Assembly at the Macroscopic Scale, Proceedings of the IEEE

(5) Blinky Blocks

(6) Kevin A. Holdcroft, Christoph H. Belke, Samir Bennani, and Jamie Paik (2021) 3PAC: A Plug-and-Play System for Distributed Power Sharing and Communication in Modular Robots, IEEE/ASME Transactions On Mechatronics, Vol. 27, No. 2, p. 858-867

(7) Christoph H. Belke. and Jamie Paik (2019) Automatic Couplings With Mechanical Overload Protection forModular Robots, IEEE/ASME Transactions On Mechatronics, Vol. 24, No. 3, p.1420-1426

(8) Kevin Holdcroft, Anastasia Bolotnikova, Christoph Belke, and Jamie Paik (2022), Modular robot networking: a novel schema and its performance assessment, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

(9) Sophia Guzmán Artmann (2024), Swarm Robotics: A State Of The Art Review, FG Neuroinformatik und Kognitive Robotik TU Ilmenau, Hauptseminar