Science Robotics

The PDF file includes:

• Section S1. The Bluebot 3D vision system.
• Section S2. Controlled dispersion.
• Section S3. Dynamic circle formation and milling.
• Section S4. Multibehavior search experiments.
• Section S5. 3D tracking.
• Fig. S1. Additional components of the Bluebot platform.
• Fig. S2. Example scenarios for the blob detection algorithm.
• Fig. S3. Time complexity of rapid LED blob detection at an image resolution of 256 × 192.
• Fig. S4. Camera and robot coordinate systems.
• Fig. S5. x and y error in the Bluebot’s position estimation for 24 cases.
• Fig. S6. Error in the z direction as a percentage of distance.
• Fig. S7. Overall (x,y,z) error as a function of distance.
• Fig. S8. Interrobot distances during single dispersion/aggregation.
• Fig. S9. Interrobot distances during repeated dispersion/aggregation.
• Fig. S10. Number of visible robots during controlled dispersion.
• Fig. S11. Target distance and number of robots influence interrobot distances during dispersion.
• Fig. S12. Seven robots arranged in a regular polygonal formation with line-of-sight sensors tangential to each other.
• Fig. S13. Expanded view of the red quadrilateral in fig. S12.
• Fig. S14. Example configuration of two robots to show that the regular polygon formation of Theorem 1 is the only stable formation.
• Fig. S15. A pathological initial configuration for the case r_0 > R.
• Fig. S16. A regular polygon configuration with field-of-view sensors (cf. fig. S12 for line-of-sight sensors).
• Fig. S17. Geometry for calculating the milling radius with field-of-view sensors.
• Fig. S18. Tank setup.
• Fig. S19. Schematic side view of the tank showing the overhead camera and the salient parameters.
• Fig. S20. Schematic of the tank view as seen from the overhead camera.

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Other Supplementary Material for this manuscript includes the following:

• Movie S1 (.mp4 format). Introduction to Blueswarm.
• Movie S2 (.mp4 format). Collective organization in time.
• Movie S3 (.mp4 format). Collective organization in space.
• Movie S4 (.mp4 format). Dynamic circle formation.
• Movie S5 (.mp4 format). Multibehavior search operation.
• Movie S6 (.mp4 format). Summary and highlights.