HeROS: a miniaturised platform for research and development on Heterogeneous RObotic Systems

TL;DR

HeROS provides a low-cost, miniaturised tile-based testbed to accelerate development and testing of heterogeneous robotic systems, addressing the high cost and risk of experimentation on target hardware. The platform combines a modular board with tiling, mechanised obstacles, and three robot systems (Homar, customised Dobot Magician, and MiniRyś) to support both mobile and manipulation tasks within a compact space. Demonstrated applications—TwitchGo, line/corridor following, and multirobot transport—highlight capabilities in human-in-the-loop control, perception-based navigation, and cooperative robotics. By enabling repeatable, scalable experiments and employing ROS 2 and the MeROS metamodel, HeROS supports rapid prototyping, educational use, and research into coordinated and swarm-like multi-robot strategies with potential for broad practical impact.

Abstract

Tests and prototyping are vital in the research and development of robotic systems. Work with target hardware is problematic. Hence, in the article, a low-cost, miniaturised physical platform is presented to deal with experiments on heterogeneous robotic systems. The platform comprises a physical board with tiles of the standardised base, diverse mobile robots, and manipulation robots. The number of exemplary applications validates the usefulness of the solution.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: HeROS board
• Figure 2: HeROS board
• Figure 3: Customised Dobot Magician robot - visualization and real view.
• Figure 4: Two variants of MiniRyś mobile robot
• Figure 5: Test environment for robot cooperation in a transportation task