PhotoBeacon: design of an optical system for localization and communication in multi-robot systems

The PhotoBeacon system provides a computationally simple means for localizing and communicating among many (>50) small, autonomous mobile robots. In addition to determining the bearing of other robots for triangulation, the PhotoBeacon system can also be used to map obstacles or free space and provides a simple method for maintaining robot formations. In order to reduce the computational complexity generally required for localization, the PhotoBeacon system moves much of this complexity to silicon. The system design is broken into four basic components: a high-power LED beacon to transmit, a fisheye lens to capture transmitted light from other robots in the horizontal plane, a custom CMOS sensor chip to detect signals from other robots, and a printed circuit board (PCB) with microcontroller to control the other components. This paper presents a high-level algorithm for localization using the PhotoBeacon system as well as the design of each of the system components. In addition, some initial results are presented to demonstrate bearing measurements with the custom PhotoBeacon Sensor IC. Index Terms – Localization, Multi-Robot Systems, Triangulation, Optical Communication