The Alice is a very small "sugarcube" mobile robot (2x2x2cm) developed at the Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) at the

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern Franc ...

Lausanne Lausanne ( , , , ) ; it, Losanna; rm, Losanna. is the capital and largest city of the Swiss French speaking canton of Vaud. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, and fac ...

, Switzerland between 1998 and 2004. It has been part of the

Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems The Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) is part of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. It replaced the existing Institute of Robotics, of the ETH Zurich in October 2002, when Prof. Bradley J. Nelson moved from the University of Minnesot ...

(IRIS) at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zurich) since 2006. It was designed with the following goals: * Design an intelligent mobile robot as cheap and small as possible * Study collective behavior with a large quantity of robots * Acquire knowledge in highly integrated intelligent system * Provide a hardware platform for further research

Technical specifications

Main Features

* Dimensions: 22 mm x 21 mm x 20 mm * Velocity: 40 mm/s * Power consumption: 12 - 17 mW * Communication: local IR 6 cm, IR & radio 10 m * Power autonomy: up to 10 hours

Main Robot

* 2 SWATCH motors with wheels and tires * Microcontroller PIC16LF877 with 8Kwords Flash program memory * Plastic frame and flex print with all the electronic components * 4 active IR proximity sensors (reflection measurement) * NiMH rechargeable battery * Receiver for remote control * 24 pin connector for extension, voltage regulator and power switch

Extension modules

* Linear camera 102 pixels * Bidirectional radio communication * Tactile sensors *

ZigBee Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios, such as for home automation, medical device data collection, and ...

ready radio module running

TinyOS TinyOS is an embedded, component-based operating system and platform for low-power wireless devices, such as those used in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), smartdust, ubiquitous computing, personal area networks, building automation, and smart ...

Projects and applications

* 20 robots at Swiss Expo.02 * RobOnWeb * Navigation and map building * Soccer Kit : 2 teams of 3 Alices play soccer on an A4 page * Collective behavior investigations: video.mov 1 and 2 * Mixed society robots-insects as part of the European LEURRE project * Investigation of

levels of selection A unit of selection is a biological entity within the hierarchy of biological organization (for example, an entity such as: a self-replicating molecule, a gene, a cell, an organism, a group, or a species) that is subject to natural selection. ...

and

relatedness The coefficient of relationship is a measure of the degree of consanguinity (or biological relationship) between two individuals. The term coefficient of relationship was defined by Sewall Wright in 1922, and was derived from his definition of th ...

on the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

cooperation Cooperation (written as co-operation in British English) is the process of groups of organisms working or acting together for common, mutual, or some underlying benefit, as opposed to working in competition for selfish benefit. Many animal ...

in the ANTS project

References

* Caprari, G. Autonomous Micro-Robots: Applications and Limitations. PhD Thesis EPFL n° 275
PDFAbstract
* Autonomous Systems Lab. (ASL) Index - Welcome.

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

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ETH (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

now since 2006
Collaborative Coverage with up to 30 Alices

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