Practical Applications and Experiments with the SyRoTek Platform

SyRoTek is a platform for distant teaching and experimentation in robotics and related fields, which provides remote access to a group of thirteen fully autonomous mobile robots equipped with standard robotic sensors operating in the Arena – a restricted area with a set of fixed and retractable obstacles. Users of the system are able to control the robots real-time by their own developed algorithms and process and analyse data gathered with robots’ sensors. The SyRoTek is after several years of development and operation a technically mature system providing all functionalities enabling and sweeten a whole development process: interfaces to robotic frameworks (namely ROS: Robot Operating System and Player/Stage), simulation environment based on Stage, on-line and off-line visualization of the current state of the Arena and the robots, web interface, tutorials and documentation, etc. Thanks to operation in 24/7 mode and easy interchangeability of the robots, the system is an ideal tool for performing a huge number of long-term and repeating multi-robot experiments.

This paper aims to introduce research activities made thanks to the system and to describe experiments performed with it by users from various institutions and application areas. Many of these experiments will not be possible or their realization will need order of magnitude more effort and/or time without the SyRoTek system. These applications are discussed as well as experiments performed.