NXT/RCX co-operative behaviour

[jester]

Hi,

As part of my final year Uni project, I was hoping to build several NXT robots that could 'herd' a group of RCX based robots, though I intend to start with a predator/prey architecture to begin with and work up. It is hoped the final design will demonstrate a certain level of co-operation between units.

I was hoping someone might have some experience or insights on how best to go about this, both program wise and sensor/robot architecture wise. I have never worked with multiple units, let alone of differing models, but am a competent programmer and excellent builder. I have more than 10 RCX units with all the usual sensors plus a few home brew sonar sensors, as well as a single NXT kit.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Andy

[lawrie]

How do you plan to communicate between the NXT and the RCX? If you have a Mindsensors NRLink-Nx sensor, several ways of communicating are supported in the lejos.rcxcomm package, or you can use the RCXLink class directly.

The HiTechnic IRLink also supports communication with the RCX, but there is no current driver with leJOS for RCX communication with this. (There is a driver for driving Power Function Motors with it). If you wanted to use this, I could probably write a driver for you.

Of course there are other ways you could detect RCXs without communicating with them. You could use a camera, color sensor, sound sensor, IR signal detection (with an IR seeker sensor), etc.

[jester]

I had thought about using simple IR links, but decided it might be easier to have the RCX units truly act as 'sheep' ie. no comms, just simple methods of determining proximity to other units, and preferably tell the difference btween an RCX or an NXT. Only the NXT units would have comms to facilitate co-operation