  In this paper, we present Misaka, a visualized swarm testbed for smart grid
algorithm evaluation, also an extendable open-source open-hardware platform for
developing tabletop tangible swarm interfaces. The platform consists of a
collection of custom-designed 3 omni-directional wheels robots each 10 cm in
diameter, high accuracy localization through a microdot pattern overlaid on top
of the activity sheets, and a software framework for application development
and control, while remaining affordable (per unit cost about 30 USD at the
prototype stage). We illustrate the potential of tabletop swarm user interfaces
through a set of smart grid algorithm application scenarios developed with
Misaka.
