2014/02/15 by Aaron T. Becker, Becker, Aaron, Chris Ertel +3
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Micro and Nano Robotics #Mobile Crowdsensing and Crowdsourcing #Molecular Communication and Nanonetworks #Robotics (cs.RO)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1402.3653
openalex publication_date 2014/02/15 · openalex created_date 2022/10/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Micro- and nanorobotics have the potential to revolutionize many applications\nincluding targeted material delivery, assembly, and surgery. The same\nproperties that promise breakthrough solutions---small size and large\npopulations---present unique challenges to generating controlled motion. We\nwant to use large swarms of robots to perform manipulation tasks;\nunfortunately, human-swarm interaction studies as conducted today are limited\nin sample size, are difficult to reproduce, and are prone to hardware failures.\nWe present an alternative.\n This paper examines the perils, pitfalls, and possibilities we discovered by\nlaunching SwarmControl.net, an online game where players steer swarms of up to\n500 robots to complete manipulation challenges. We record statistics from\nthousands of players, and use the game to explore aspects of large-population\nrobot control. We present the game framework as a new, open-source tool for\nlarge-scale user experiments. Our results have potential applications in human\ncontrol of micro- and nanorobots, supply insight for automatic controllers, and\nprovide a template for large online robotic research experiments.\n