Low-Cost High Performance Infrared-Based Range and Bearing System for Swarm Robotics

Abstract

Short-range sensing and communication systems are critical for enabling decentralized coordination in swarm robotics. This article presents the design and evaluation of a novel, low-cost, infrared-based system that enables robot detection, relative distance measurement, and inter-robot communication through a new combination of hardware and software design. All sensing and communication functions are handled by a single sensor type, specifically a modulated infrared receiver which simplifies the hardware design and facilitates integration into small-scale platforms. The system was developed through iterative hardware and software refinement to ensure a balance between performance and cost. To validate the proposed design, a detailed experimental study was conducted, systematically analyzing the system from both hardware and algorithmic perspectives. The experiments include emitter selection under varying illumination and surface reflectance conditions, sensor-unit-level calibration analysis, and detailed range and bearing characterization at both the sensor and multi-robot levels. In addition, communication performance between robots was experimentally assessed using the same infrared sensing infrastructure. Experimental results show that the system enables consistent sensing within a 30 cm interaction range, with approximately 11% range error and about 8° bearing error while operating at a 10 Hz sensing update rate. These results demonstrate that the proposed architecture provides a practical balance between sensing accuracy, update rate, hardware complexity, and cost, making it promising for low-cost swarm robotic applications requiring integrated local sensing and communication capabilities.