  Swarm robotics has experienced a rapid expansion in recent years, primarily
fueled by specialized multi-robot systems developed to achieve dedicated
collective actions. These specialized platforms are in general designed with
swarming considerations at the front and center. Key hardware and software
elements required for swarming are often deeply embedded and integrated with
the particular system. However, given the noticeable increase in the number of
low-cost mobile robots readily available, practitioners and hobbyists may start
considering to assemble full-fledged swarms by minimally retrofitting such
mobile platforms with a swarm-enabling technology. Here, we report one possible
embodiment of such a technology designed to enable the assembly and the study
of swarming in a range of general-purpose robotic systems. This is achieved by
combining a modular and transferable software toolbox with a hardware suite
composed of a collection of low-cost and off-the-shelf components. The
developed technology can be ported to a relatively vast range of robotic
platforms with minimal changes and high levels of scalability. This
swarm-enabling technology has successfully been implemented on two distinct
distributed multi-robot systems, a swarm of mobile marine buoys and a team of
commercial terrestrial robots. We have tested the effectiveness of both of
these distributed robotic systems in performing collective exploration and
search scenarios, as well as other classical cooperative behaviors.
Experimental results on different swarm behaviors are reported for the two
platforms in uncontrolled environments and without any supporting
infrastructure. The design of the associated software library allows for a
seamless switch to other cooperative behaviors, and also offers the possibility
to simulate newly designed collective behaviors prior to their implementation
onto the platforms.
