Creating expressive robot swarms

As robot swarms leave the lab and enter our daily lives, it is important that we find ways by which we can effectively communicate with robot swarms, especially ones that contain a high number of robots. In our lab, we are thinking of ways to make swarms for people that are easy and intuitive to interact with. By making robots expressive, we will be able to understand their state and therefore, we will be able to make decisions accordingly. To that extent, we have created a system where humans can build a canvas with robots and create shapes with up to 300 real robots and up to 1000 simulated robots. In a system we created called Robotic Canvas, we project an image onto a robot swarm via an overhead projector, and the swarm replicates the image using their LEDs by sensing the colour of light projected. If a GIF or a video is projected onto the robots, the robots appear to be showing a video.