Publications de Michael Bonani

Bringing robotics into formal education using the Thymio open source hardware robot

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Fanny Riedo, Philippe Rétornaz, Manon Aline Briod, Léa Marie Pereyre

Mobile robots are valuable tools for education because of both the enthusiasm they raise and the multidisciplinary nature of robotics technology. Mobile robots give access to a wide range of fields, such as complex mechanics, sensors, wireless transmission ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2017

Bio-inspired construction with mobile robots and compliant pockets

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Touraj Soleymani

In this paper, we develop an autonomous construction system in which self-contained ground robots build a protective barrier by means of compliant pockets. We present a stochastic control algorithm based on two biological mechanisms–stigmergy and templates ...

Elsevier2015

Cooperative navigation in robotic swarms

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Philippe Rétornaz

We study cooperative navigation for robotic swarms in the context of a general event-servicing scenario. In the scenario, one or more events need to be serviced at specific locations by robots with the required skills. We focus on the question of how the s ...

Springer Verlag2013

Seamless Multi-Robot Programming for the People: ASEBA and the Wireless Thymio II Robot

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Fanny Riedo, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Philippe Rétornaz

IEEE2013

Swarmanoid: a novel concept for the study of heterogeneous robotic swarms

Francesco Mondada, Dario Floreano, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Daniel Burnier, Valentin Longchamp, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Philippe Rétornaz, James Roberts, Timothy Stirling

2013

Towards Long-Term Collective Experiments

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Philippe Rétornaz, François Rey, Steven Adriaan Roelofsen

It is often challenging to manage the battery supply when dealing with a fleet of mobile robots during long experiments. If one uses classical recharge stations, then agents are immobilized during the whole recharge process. In this study, we present a nov ...

Springer Berlin Heidelberg2013

Involving and training public school teachers in using robotics for education

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Fanny Riedo, Mariza Freire

The introduction of technology in the public school teaching process could help increasing the weak motivation we can observe toward engineering studies. To achieve this goal, one main obstacle is motivating public school teachers to use technological tool ...

2012

A Programming Workshop using the Robot "Thymio II": The Effect on the Understanding by Children

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Fanny Riedo

Robots are both fascinating objects for the general public and devices whose conception, understanding and pro- gramming involve many fields. This unique combination makes them an ideal tool for introducing science and technology to children. This paper pr ...

IEEE2012

Physical interactions in swarm robotics: the hand-bot case study

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Philippe Rétornaz

This paper presents a case-study on the performance achieved by the mechanical interactions of self-assembling mobile robots. This study is based on the hand-bot robot, designed to operate within heterogeneous swarms of robots. The hand-bot is specialized ...

Springer2012

Towards Autonomous Energy-Wise RObjects

Francesco Mondada, Alcherio Martinoli, Michael Bonani, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Philippe Rétornaz

In this article, the RObject concept is first introduced. This is followed by a survey of applicable energy scavenging technologies. Energy is a key issue for the large scale deployment of robotics in daily life, as recharging the batteries places a consid ...

Springer Berlin Heidelberg2011

ASEBA: A Modular Architecture for Event-Based Control of Complex Robots

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Valentin Longchamp, Philippe Rétornaz

We propose ASEA, a modular architecture for event-based control of complex robots. ASEBA runs scripts inside virtual machines on self-contained sensor and actuator nodes. This distributes processing with no loss of versatility and provides several benefits ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2011

Enhanced Directional Self-Assembly based on Active Recruitment and Guidance

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Philippe Rétornaz

IEEE Press2011

Towards an Autonomous Evolution of Non-Biological Physical Organisms

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Roderich Gross, Lorenz Küchler

We propose an experimental study where simplistic organ- isms rise from inanimate matter and evolve solely through physical interactions. These organisms are composed of three types of macroscopic building blocks floating in an agitated medium. The dynamis ...

Springer Verlag2011

Design of Magnetic Switchable Device (MSD) and applications in climbing robot

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich

A Magnetic Switchable Device (MSD) is a ferromagnetic circuit using permanent magnets where the flux can circulate between different paths when its configuration is changed. This routes or cancels the flux through specific surfaces, and thus turns on or of ...

World Scientific2010

Affordable SLAM through the Co-Design of Hardware and Methodology

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Paolo Germano, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Valentin Longchamp, Philippe Rétornaz

SLAM is a prominent feature for autonomous robots operating in undefined environments. Applications areas such as consumer robotics appliances would clearly benefit from low-cost and compact SLAM implementations. The SLAM research community has developed s ...

IEEE Press2010

The MarXbot, a Miniature Mobile Robot Opening new Perspectives for the Collective-robotic Research

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Daniel Burnier, Valentin Longchamp, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Philippe Rétornaz, Gilles Roulet

Collective and swarm robotics explores scenarios involving many robots running at the same time. A good platform for collective-robotic experiments should provide certain features among others: it should have a large battery life, it should be able to perc ...

IEEE Press2010

Robotique collective et auto-assemblage : une étude mécatronique

Michael Bonani

We present a study of collective robotics by including a mechatronics point of view. In the field it is usually claimed that collective robots are simple and relatively cheap because they are produced in large quantities. Instead in our study we show that ...

EPFL2010

Teamwork in Self-Organized Robot Colonies

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Roderich Gross

Swarm robotics draws inspiration from decentralized self-organizing biological systems in general and from the collective behavior of social insects in particular. In social insect colonies, many tasks are performed by higher order group or team entities, ...

2009

The Hand-bot, a Robot Design for Simultaneous Climbing and Manipulation

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat, Michael Bonani, Philippe Rétornaz

We present a novel approach to mobile object manipulation for service in indoor environments. Current research in service robotics focus on single robots able to move, manipulate objects, and transport them to various locations. Our approach differs by tak ...

Springer-Verlag2009

Swarm-bots to the Rescue

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Roderich Gross

We explore the problem of resource allocation in a system made up of autonomous agents that can either carry out tasks individually or, when necessary, cooperate by forming physical connections with each other. We consider a group transport scenario that i ...

Springer Verlag2009