Swarm robots in a closed loop visual odometry system by using visible light communication

Abstract

Motivated by the looming radio frequency spectrum crisis, this project aims at demonstrating that Visible Light Communication (VLC) has now reached a state where it can prove that it is a viable solution to this fundamental problem. VLC is a technique used for data transmission at very high speeds through light, which transfers data by varying its intensity at unperceivable rates. The proposed solution also establishes a closed loop with an overhead camera which mocks like a GPS in the swarm environment. Positional information of the robots is given by augmented reality tags and this data is fed-back to the robots via VLC. The paper elaborately describes the approach used to exploit off-the-shelf components for facilitating VLC. Overhead localization and the closed loop made here control each swarm robot with simplex communication. Problems faced while prototyping and overcoming them in revisions have been also described.