Misaka: Interactive Swarm Testbed for Smart Grid Distributed Algorithm Test and Evaluation

TL;DR

The paper tackles the need for an accessible hardware testbed to evaluate distributed smart grid algorithms beyond centralized control. It introduces Misaka, a visualized tabletop swarm platform built from small omni-wheel robots with open-source hardware/software, 2D localization via a printed microdot pattern, and a flexible software framework for development. It formalizes a fully decentralized average consensus approach for distributed economic dispatch and demonstrates it through Misaka-enabled visualizations: dynamic iteration, information transmission, time-series navigation, and scatterplots, using a $\boldsymbol{s}^{(k+1)} = \mathbf{Q}\boldsymbol{s}^{(k)}$ update and related graph constructs. The platform provides a practical, low-cost pathway to prototype, test, and communicate distributed control strategies, serving as a versatile tool for researchers and educators, with open access at the project repository.

Abstract

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.

Figures (14)

• Figure 1: 4-node directed graph
• Figure 2: Case 1 price curve of each unit
• Figure 3: Non-strongly connected graph iteration curve
• Figure 4: Case 2 strongly connected graph iteration curve
• Figure 5: Interactive dynamic iteration