Abstract:
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This thesis presents a new way of looking at images and videos, Display Swarm,
which is a novel robot display providing new types of visual experience. This work
is focused on creating a multi-agent control method for real-time, autonomous and
choreographic image display, where each pixel of an image is a mobile robot. This
robot display consists of a large number of small autonomous agents, each one
representing a pixel of the image, and aims at the generation of aesthetic effects
that are impossible with a traditional display, such as, choreographic motion, image
display and, finally video display.
Moreover, this novel display is envisaged to allow human-computer interaction,
where guests of a Theme Park might be able to control the movement of the group
of robots. Imagine for example the case of a guest drawing a figure and the robots
representing it, or, even more challenging, having them interactively represent a
human face.
Therefore this thesis presents a novel approach in the field of multi-agent pattern
formation, linking it to the entertainment industry, an unexplored connection with
a huge potential.
Results of this work are general in the field of multi-agent pattern formation and
might be applied to other applications. Moreover, formal results of this work are
not limited to multi-agent pattern formation and image display, two main formal
extensions of existing methods are also presented. First, an extension of Voronoi
coverage for complex patterns; and second a novel local collision avoidance for large
groups of non-holonomic agents. |