Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems October 9 - 15, 2006, Beijing, China

Solar Cell Powering with Integrated Global Positioning System for mm3 Size Robots
A. Boletis, W. Driesen, J.-M. Breguet
Laboratoire des Systemes Robotiques Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Lausanne, Switzerland Email: jean-marc.breguetgepfl.ch
Abstract- A new concept of a solar cell powering with integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) for microrobots is proposed. The main idea is to use a projector to transfer energy and to provide global positioning information to the robots that are equipped with multi-segment solar cells on their top. First tests with a 3000 ANSI lumens beamer projecting a white image showed a scavenged power of 7.1 and 27.8 pLW/mm2 for commercially available crystalline silicon solar cells and for thin film amorphous silicon solar cell respectively. Regarding the global positioning system, the projector sends regularly a sequence of 17 images and the robot decodes them using two independent solar cell segments acting as photodiodes in order to calculate its own position and orientation inside a defined arena. First experimental results on a large scale prototype are presented. For 2.65 x 2.65 mm2 photodiodes the x, y and angular resolution are 4 mm, 3 mm and 6 degrees respectively inside an arena of 512x384 mm2 and the duration of the sequence is 0.85 s. Index Terms - Solar Cell, Powering, GPS, Micro-robotics

A. Brunete Division de Ingenieria de Sistemas y Automaitica Universidad Politecnica de Madrid Madrid, Spain
Email: abrunetegetsii.upm.es robots are equipped on their top with a segmented solar module in order to use it for the following purposes: * Energy scavenging * Global positioning system * Supervisory parallel communication (beamer-torobot communication) - Programming of the robots - Generic data transmission In the case of energy scavenging, the beamer is an energy source for the robots and the solar cells are the energy scavengers. The light power is therefore converted into electrical power. For the global positioning system and the supervisory parallel communication, the beamer transmits information by modulating the light intensity (black/white/gray) of each pixel, which is sensed by the photodiodes (independent solar cell segments). This paper focuses on the energy scavenging system and the global positioning system, called here EGO-positioning. An interesting technology to fabricate this segmented solar module is thin-film amorphous silicon which has several advantages [5]. It can be deposited on various substrates, designed in many shapes and can be interconnected monolithically. For example, it is possible to have a transparent substrate and bottom contacts, segments connected in series, in parallel or independent. II. ENERGY SCAVENGING
In nature, the sun is an important source of energy for most living creatures. It enables photosynthesis for some groups of bacteria, algae, plants and its electromagnetic energy is converted into thermal energy by animals. Therefore, we propose to create a virtual sun for the swarm of microrobots by using a projector, in particular a beamer. Illuminating the arena in which the swarm operates with a beamer, energy in form of light is available for every microrobot (Fig. 1). Equipping the micro-robots with solar cells at their top, this energy can be scavenged and directly used by the robots. An example of solar powered microrobot can be found in [6].

I. INTRODUCTION

motion, communication and perception functionalities. Moreover, in order to achieve complex scenarios inspired by insects' behavior, they must be able to know their own position inside the arena. Due to constraints including physical size and the large number of robots, positioning systems well known in mobile robotics are not applicable here. Hightower et al. [2] give an overview of various solutions for indoor localization of autonomous robots ranging from IR detection to ultrasounds systems. None of the cited works address the issues of extreme miniaturization or high number of robots. Even more recent research, e.g. [3, 4] are concerned about accuracy rather than applicability for 1000 mm3 size robots. This paper presents an innovative system inspired by nature. We propose to create a virtual sun using a beamer that illuminates the arena in which the robots are placed. The

The European project I-SWARM aims to develop a swarm of 1'000 autonomous micro-robots that will be used as a benchmark platform to study various scenarios and to demonstrate the emergence of swarm intelligence [1]. The robots will be placed in an arena, consisting on a flat surface of about 300x210 mm2. The robots' size is as small as 3x3x3 mm3. They must be fully autonomous and feature

A. Beamer

Nowadays beamers use powerful high pressure arc lamps, e.g. mercury or xenon lamps. Due to the high irradiance of

1-4244-0259-X/06/$20.00 C)2006 IEEE

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these beamers, it is interesting to use them as an energy source for the microrobots. In order to choose the adequate solar cell technology and to estimate the power that can be scavenged by a microrobot, a characterization of the beamer is needed.
I
Beamer

As shown in Fig. 2, the complete spectral power distribution is inside the visible range. UV or IR components do not irradiate the surface.
B. Solar Cells In order to compare the performances of the amorphous

silicon technology with the crystalline silicon technology, the following devices have been tested under the considered beamer illumination: * Osram BPW34 photodiode (crystalline silicon) with an active area of 7 mm2 (Fig. 3a) * a-Si:H solar cell developed at IMT Neuchatel (amorphous silicon) with an active area of 25 mm2 (Fig. 3b)

Fig. 1 A beamer illuminating the arena and the robots

Arena

DLPTM technology) with a high pressure mercury lamp was

A BenQ PB 8250 beamer (3000 ANSI lumens and

a) b) Fig. 3 a) Osram BPW34 photodiode, b) IMT Neuchatel aSi:H solar cells

chosen for the experimental setup. If more power would be required, high-end beamers up to 27000 ANSI lumens are also available. All measurements presented in this section were carried out projecting a white image on a rectangular surface corresponding to the size of the arena defined for the swarm of microrobots (A4 surface, c.a. 300x210 mm2). The relative spectral power distribution of the lamp is summarized in table I.
TABLE I RELATIVE SPECTRAL POWER DISTRIBUTION OF THE LAMP (SOURCE: BENQ)

>7060It
a)
a~)

5040-

;:)

>302010

Wavelength range (nm)

< 280

280-315 315-400 400-780 780-1650

Percentage of total power (%) 0.02 0.29 20.23 72.24 7.22

XtC

450 350

550

650

750

850

950

1050

Wavelength (nm)

Fig. 4 Relative spectral sensitivity of the BPW34 and the aSi:H compared to the beamer relative spectral power distribution

However, the beamer output spectral power distribution differs from the lamp power distribution since a portion of the lamp spectrum is absorbed by the internal filters of the beamer. A measurement of the spectral power distribution of the beamer has been carried out with a calibrated spectrometer and the result is shown in Fig. 2. The measurement has been taken in the region of maximum irradiance.
1.

400

450

500

Wavelenght (nm)

550

600

650

700

Fig. 2 Spectral power distribution of the beamer BenQ PB 8250 projecting a white image on an A4 surface measured in the region of maximum irradiance

The BPW34 is more sensitive to the red-infrared wavelengths (maximum at around 850 nm), while the a-Si:H to the visible wavelengths (maximum at around 510 nm). Since the beamer emission is in the visible range, in terms of spectral sensitivity range, the a-Si:H is more efficient than the BPW34.Indeed, As shown in Fig. 4, the spectral sensitivity of the a-Si:H fits very well the beamer spectral power distribution and therefore a high efficiency could be expected. C. Power measurement results The I-V curves of the two solar cells have been measured in the region of maximum irradiance of the A4 surface projecting a white image with the beamer. Table II summarizes some important information that can be extracted from the I-V curves. As predicted, the a-Si:H efficiency is higher than the BPW34 efficiency. In the case of an indoor illumination with a cold illumination spectrum, an increase by a factor of about 4 can be obtained if using an amorphous silicon solar cell instead of a crystalline silicon solar cell. However, under

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outdoor illumination conditions the a-Si:H exhibits efficiency than the crystalline silicon.

lower

AL

Piotodiode 1

TABLE II BPW34 AND A-SI:H PERFORMANCES WITH BEAMER ILLUMINATION

BPW34
Open-circuit voltage [V]
Short-circuit current [ptA] 0.43
25

IP
3

aS:

a-Si:
0.83
-

~~AH
Y

--

45 27.9
@

Photodiode 2

Maximum power density [ptW/mm2]

Fill factor

7.1

0.33 V

0.72 V

Fig. 5 Configuration of the solar module: a) initial angle

position of the robot xr, yr and orientation a

a)

f3,

b) arbitrary

0.66 5.9

0.75 23

Efficiency [%]

Xi + X2
Y1 +Y2
2

1)
(2)
_

D. Expectedperformances for mm3 size robots The performances of the two types of solar cells under the considered beamer can be extrapolated for the dimensions of mm3 size robots (Table III). The expected power for mm3 size robots given in Table III are the minimum values that can be obtained. In order to increase them, several options exist, e.g. use more powerful beamers or additional lamps.
TABLE III EXPECTED PERFORMANCES OF THE SOLAR CELLS FOR 2x2 AND 3x3 MM2 SURFACES

Yr
a
=

,/-6 =arctan

Yi -Y2
x1

arctan

AH

(3)

-x2

Power [ptW]
2x2 mm2 surface

3x3 mm2 surface

63.6

Crystalline silicon Amorphous silicon

28.3

111.5

250.8

III.

EGO-PoSITIONING

A. Image sequences The strategy of EGO-positioning is to project two image sequences corresponding to a horizontal and a vertical position code. The images divide the arena into smaller and smaller vertical and horizontal stripes, allowing the robots to calculate in which zone of the arena they are located. Two different image sequences based on black and white images have been investigated: * Binary position code * Gray position code The smallest projected line defines the resolution of the EGO-positioning procedure. In addition, it affects the number of images composing the sequence and therefore the duration of the procedure. 1) Binary position code: The most trivial position code that can be projected is the binary position code. Every zone of the arena is coded by a sequence of bits from the most significant to the less significant. Fig. 6 shows an example of a binary position code.

The principle of the proposed EGO-positioning system is to use the beamer to project on the arena a sequence of images corresponding to a position code. This code is detected in parallel by the two photodiodes of the solar module of each

microrobot inside the arena. Applying then a decoding algorithm on the obtained position code, the microrobots calculate their x and y coordinates from a defined origin of the arena as well as their orientation. Only one centered photodiode would be sufficient to obtain the microrobots position, however knowing the position of two photodiodes allows calculating also its orientation (Fig. 5). The proposed EGO-positioning procedure allows the microrobots in the swarm to know their own position and orientation inside the arena with very limited onboard hardware. The recognition of the position is done by the microrobot itself and its position is not known neither by the other microrobots nor by a supervisor. The procedure is synchronous, i.e. every robot identifies its position exactly at the same time, without any delay. The position xr,yr and the orientation a of the micro-robot, considering the configuration shown in Fig. 5, are calculated with the equations (1), (2) and (3) respectively. The function arctan2 defines an angle between -180 and 180 degrees.

IMAGE 1

IMAGE 2

IMAGE 3

IMAGE 4

-*xIMAGE 5 IMAGE 6 IMAGE 7 Fig. 6 Image sequence giving binary positions

IMAGE 8

The 1 st and the 5th image correspond to the most significant bit of the x position and y position respectively. Hence, assuming white corresponds to "1" and black to "0", the position of the photodiodes in the example of Fig. 5 is:

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* Photodiode 1: x= 000 y= 0101 * Photodiode 2: x= l01 y=0010 The algorithm for position calculation is very simple since the obtained position code corresponds to the binary position of the photodiodes. However, in the binary position code there are positions in the arena where a transition line between black and white stripes occurs in more than one of the images, which can result in large position measurement errors. 2) Gray code: The Gray code is a modified binary code, in which the change between two successive numbers affects only 1 bit. A Gray code for three bits is given for example by the sequence: 000 - 001 - 011 - 010 - 110 - 111- 101 - 100 The Gray code can be converted into a binary code with the following algorithm: % gray number to be converted gray= [Xn ... Xi] % copying the high order bit bin[1]=gray[1] for i=2 to n bin[i]=bin[i - 1] XOR gray[i] end Gray codes are useful in optical encoders since a slight change in position produces only a 1 bit change while an arbitrarily number of bits can change with a binary code, possibly leading to larger errors [7]. Fig. 7 shows an example of a Gray position code. With this image sequence, the positions of the photodiodes are coded in the Gray code: * Photodiode 1: x= 00 y= 0111 * Photodiode 2: x= OIl y=0011 Applying the algorithm described above, the Gray coded positions of the photodiodes are transformed into binary positions: * Photodiode 1: x= 000 y= 0101 * Photodiode 2: x= l01 y=0010 These positions correspond to the positions found with the binary code.

project a specific start code composed for example of three images. This start code can be used in addition to stop the microrobots and to synchronize the microrobots with the EGO-positioning sequence. Different start codes can eventually enable other robot behaviors.
B. Hardware description The demonstration and the evaluation of the proposed EGO-positioning procedure have been carried out on cm3 size robots available at the EPFL. The considered robot Alice [8] is a two-wheel autonomous robot of about 9 cm3, on which additional modules can be connected. 1) Beamer: The considered beamer is the same used for energy scavenging. It provides a high contrast ratio of 2000:1 and has been operated at its native resolution of 1024x768 pixels. 2) Arena: The chosen dimension of the arena is 512 x 384 2 mm . One pixel projected by the beamer corresponds therefore to 0.5 mm. A picture of the demonstrator consisting of the beamer connected to a laptop, the arena and Alice is shown in Fig. 8. A sensing module compatible with Alice has been developed (Fig. 9a). It consists of two diagonally placed photodiodes and the electronics needed to obtain a reverse biased configuration (Fig. 9b). A capacitor has been added in parallel to the resistor in order to reject high frequency components of the projected image. The chosen photodiode is the BPW34 from Osram and has a large sensitive area (2.65 x 2.65 mm2) to easily detect light intensity variations (Fig. 3a).

Arena

Alice

position: lm

IMAGE 1

IMAGE 2

IMAGE 3

IMAGE 4

Fig. 8 Demonstrator set-up for the experiments of the EGO-Positioning with Alice robot
Photodiodes

IMAGE 5

Fig. 7 Image sequence giving Gray coded positions

IMAGE 6

IMAGE 7

IMAGE 8

3) Start images: In order to calculate their correct position, the microrobots have to stop moving at the beginning of the EGO-positioning procedure and have to hold their position. A simple method to inform the micro-robots when the EGO-positioning procedure will be carried out is to

a) b) Fig. 9 a) Photodiodes module, b) Reverse biased configuration

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\1R~ Vout
V"
hv

Beamer

Laptop

3) Alice software and image sequence implementation: The individual images for binary and Gray position codes were automatically created with ImageJ' and used as frames for the sequences generated with Adobe Premiere with a resultant frame rate of 20 fps2. The sequences projected on the arena by the beamer are played with Windows MediaPlayer. The software implemented in Alice checks every millisecond the state of the A/D converters connected to the two photodiodes and if the EGO-positioning start code is identified, a routine executed every 50 milliseconds stores the values of the two photodiodes. A threshold, equal to 160 out of 255, has been introduced to distinguish the "white" from the "black". From the stored values, the position and orientation of the microrobot are calculated with the algorithms described previously. IV. PERFORMACES AND EVALUATION A. Performances With an arena of 512 x 384 mm2 and photodiodes of a 2.65 x 2.65 mm2 sensitive area, the EGO-positioning procedure has the following characteristics: * Number of images for the start code: 3 * Number of images for x position: 7 * Number of images for y position: 7 * Resolution x: 4 mm * Resolution y: 3 mm * Angular resolution: 6 deg * Duration: 0.85 s Increasing to 8 the number of images would give theoretical resolution of 2 mm for x and 1.5 mm for y. However, in this case the limiting factor will be the sensitive area of the photodiodes that will lead to an actual resolution of 2.56 mm on x and y.
B. Evaluation Since the intensity of the white images projected on the arena is not uniform, reliability of the EGO-positioning procedure (binary and Gray codes) is tested at different positions in the arena. Moreover, in three of the four positions (A, B and D) the photodiodes were intentionally well aligned with the projected stripes, while in position C the center of photodiode was positioned exactly at the transition line between two stripes (Fig. 10): * A: aligned with stripes @ maximum intensity (100%) * B: aligned with stripes @ minimum intensity (40%) * C: NOT aligned with stripes center of the arena (85 % of the maximum intensity) * D: aligned with stripes

*A

Fig. 10 Measured points on the arena

The reliability test is carried out projecting 20 binary and 20 Gray sequences for each robot position. The position error of photodiode 1 is calculated comparing the real measured position to the position calculated by the micro-robot. Results for xl are shown in Table IV and for y, in Table V.
TABLE IV RELIABILITY RESULTS OF X1 FOR POINTS A, B, C AND D --.
----

---

--

---

Ax, <4mm
A

4mm < Ax, < 8mm 0 1 0

8mm < Ax, 0

-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
0
0 1 20

Binary

20

Gray
Binary

19
20

Gray
Binary

19
0

0
0 1

Gray Binary

19 20 17
TABLE V

0 0
3

0
0

Gray

RELIABILITY RESULTS OF Y1 FOR POINTS A, B, C AND D

Ay, < 3mm

A Binary 18

3mm < Ay, < 6mm

2

6mm < Ay 0

Gray
Binary

20
19

0
1

0
0 3 20 2 1 3

Gray
Binary

17
0

0
0 1 1

Gray Binary

17 18
17

Gray

ImageJ is a Java image processing program The effective frame rate is 60 fps, but every image has a duration of three frames

When comparing the results of the measurements at point A and B, no significant influence of the light intensity on the reliability can been observed. At the transition line between two stripes (point C) better results (less and smaller errors) are clearly obtained with the Gray code. However, in the points of good alignment between photodiodes and projected stripes (A,B and D), the binary code seems to perform slightly better. This might be due to synchronization errors between the image sequence and the reading of the A/D converters, which

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are most likely to occur at the last bit that has a more important weight in the Gray code. It can be concluded that the Grey code gives at least 85% of correct results (Ax, < 4mm, Ay1 < 3mm) at all four positions.
IV. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

could think of applications as interactive haptic interfaces (for instance during oral presentations) or interactive games [9].
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The performances of amorphous and crystalline silicon solar cells under beamer illumination have been tested. With this particular light source the amorphous silicon is more efficient than the crystalline silicon. Projecting a white image on a A4 arena, the scavenged power for the amorphous silicon and the crystalline silicon is 27.8 and 7.1 jtW/mm2. In order to generate a higher power on the solar cells, a higher irradiance on the arena is needed. A powerful beamer or secondary lamps in addition to the beamer could be used. With these secondary lamps turned on, a minimum of irradiance to the solar cells is always guaranteed, allowing the robots to survive even if the beamer is used for other purposes, e.g. EGO-positioning or robot programming.

The I-SWARM project is funded by the European Community. We would like to thank the Autonomous Systems Lab of EPFL (ASL) and in particular Fabien Tache for giving us the possibility to use the robot Alice and for his technical help. Thanks also to our undergraduate student David Mercier for his contribution to this research.
REFERENCES
[1] "Intelligent Small World Autonomous Robots for Micro-manipulation", http://www.i-swarm.org/. FP6-2002-IST-1, 507006 (OFES 03.0221) [2] J. Hightower, G. Boriello, "Localization systems for ubiquitous computing", IEEE Computer, vol. 34, no. 8, Aug. 2001, pp. 57-66 [3] Eltaher, A.; Ghalayini, I.I.; Kaiser, T., "Towards UWB Self-Positioning Systems for Indoor Environments Based on Electric Field Polarization, Signal Strength and Multiple Antennas", Wireless Communication Systems, 2005. 2nd International Symposium on 5-7 Sept. 2005 Page(s):389 - 393. [4] Yuqiang Zhang; Junhui Zhao, "Indoor localization using time difference of arrival and time-hopping impulse radio", Communications and Information Technology, 2005. ISCIT 2005. IEEE International Symposium on Volume 2, 12-14 Oct. 2005 Page(s): 964 - 967. [5] J. Meier, et al, "Potential of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon solar cells", Thin Solid Films, Vol. 451 -452, pp. 581 -524, 2004 [6] S. Hollar, A. Flynn, C. Bellew, K.S.J. Pister, "Solar powered 10 mg silicon robot", Proceedings of IEEE Sixteenth Annual International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems MEMS '03, pp. 706711, 2003 [7] D. Alciatore and M. Histand, "Introduction to Mechatronics and Measurement Systems", McGraw-Hill, 1999 [8] G. Caprari and R. Siegwart, "Mobile Micro-Robots Ready to Use: Alice", Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2005, pp. 3295 - 3300, 2005 [9] G. Hollemans, S. van de Wijdeven, T. Bergman and E. van Loenen, "Entertaible: The Best of two Gaming Worlds", MST News, no. 3, pp. 91 1, June 2006

The realized large scale demonstrator allows evaluating the EGO-positioning procedure. In general, with the two proposed images sequences (binary and Gray code), satisfactory results are obtained validating the procedure. However, for the binary position code, some positions inside the arena give incorrect results, while the performance of the Gray position code does not depend on the position of the micro-robot inside the arena. The repeatability still remains an issue, since the projected sequence is not always fluid, generating a loss of synchronization. The threshold between a "white" and a "black" signal is still not optimal, giving sometimes errors on one single bit composing the code. Some improvements can be brought to the actual demonstrator, in terms of reliability, repeatability and duration of the procedure. Accessing directly the graphic card with a programmed sequence of images, instead of using media players, will enhance the fluidity of the sequence and therefore its repeatability. In addition, it will allow working at higher frame rates reducing the duration of the procedure. The reliability can be improved having a variable threshold between "white" and "black" signals, depending on the position on the arena. The levels of the signals received during the start code can be used to define the correct threshold. It is possible to decrease the number of images composing the sequence and therefore the duration of the procedure, working for example with a grayscale code instead of "black and white". The EGO-positioning procedure has been demonstrated on cm3 size robots and the next step will be the implementation on the I-SWARM robots. The amorphous silicon technology allows obtaining the proposed mm3 size segmented solar module. Such solar cells modules are currently being fabricated. Due to its simplicity, other application domains can be foreseen for the proposed EGO-positioning principle. One

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