BacIN

BacIN - Bio-inspired swarm robot for dynamic environment monitoring (2014-2015)
Team W5, Microrobot Research, KAIST

This work was submitted for the 2014 Happy Science Contest organized by KOFST (Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies) in the Mars Rover Mission Proposal division.

A rover system that searches for the better power-generating environment (i.e., better sunlight) was developed. This is inspired from chemotaxis of bacteria, using Berg and Brown model. To reduce the detrimental effect of randomness, we also implemented ‘Pheromone’-inspired algorithm that temporarily ‘blocks’ the searched area to be searched again. The swarm robot system consisted of master rover and small rovers mounted on the master system, successfully detected optimal location for power-generation.

BacIn Pheromone Algorithm

Additionally, we had incorporated a model bio-plant system to prove the feasibility of the plant factory in Mars. Chromogenic Enzyme Substrate Assay had been utilized for this purpose.

This work was awarded 3rd Prize (CEO of SK Hynix, 1,800$) in the Happy Science Contest and published in Advances in Robotics Research as a journal article.

K. Kim, H. Kim and H. Myung, “Bio-inspired robot swarm control algorithm for dynamic environment monitoring”. Advances in Robotics Research 2.1 (2018):1-11 [Link]