Collaborative Robotics
Original Project Aims - funded by Lancaster University Research Committee
The primary objective of this project is to further the development of a collaborative robotics group as a viable research area within the university. This will require development of ground level systems such as mobile robot navigation for groups of robots and fundamental design and implementation of the robots' architecture in order to support collaboration effectively.
Current development
With the end of the collaborative robotics project having now passed, the intention is to continue with the work started here with external funding. Presently, the staff working on this project are undertaking the Rendezvous project, which is expected to make use of and further the development of the collaborating robot system described here.
Collaborative Robotics
Collaborative robots are a development of the more common autonomous mobile robots analogous to a team of ants in nature. The robots are usually small and lightweight with less processing power or sensors than the old autonomous robots, but through collaboration manage to not only equal but frequently surpass the achievements of the larger solitary robots. Small, agile, collaborative robots can be put into circumstances where larger robots would be unsuitable, such as travelling through small pipes, or hiding out of sight for surveillance, and with the redundancy provided by multiple independently functioning robots carry a far greater chance of completing a given task in unfavourable environments.
The work in collaborative robots planned cooperatively between the computing and engineering departments envisions the robots performing a wide range of tasks such as the imaging the internal reinforcements within concrete structures, mine detection or investigating unidentified objects in an inaccessible room. In engineering a scanning system called tomography, often used for medical imaging, is currently being researched. Whilst from a computing perspective, the project ultimately aims to research the use of ad-hoc networking, resource negotiation and distributed databases, three technologies which would combine to enable the functioning of the robots more effectively as a single entity.
Contacts
Dr Angie Chandler (visit Angie's homepage here)
Research associate in the Computing Department and main project proposer.
Contact 
Dr Joe Finney
Lecturer in the computing department at Lancaster University, UK.
Contact joe@comp.lancs.ac.uk
