SwarmIT

SwarmIT provides a embedded C port for nRF53 as well as Python based services to easily build and deploy a robotic swarm infrastructure testbed. ARM TrustZone is used to create a sandboxed user environment on each device under test, without requiring a control co-processor attached to it.

swarmit.mp4

Features

• Experiment management: start, stop, monitor and status check
• Deploy a custom firmware on all or on a subset of robots of a swarm testbed
• Resilient robot state: even when crashed by buggy user code, the robot can be reprogrammed remotely and wirelessly

Usage

Get the code

Swarmit depends on the DotBot-libs and Mari repositories. They are included in the codebase as Git submodules.

Use the following command to clone the Swarmit codebase locally:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/DotBots/swarmit.git

Embedded C code

SwarmIT embedded C code can be built using Segger Embedded Studio (SES). Use Tools > Package manager to install the CMSIS 5 CMSIS-CORE, CMSIS-DSP and nRF packages.

To provision a device, follow the following steps:

1. open netcore.emProject and bootloader.emProject (or bootloader.emProject depending on your robot version) in SES
2. build and load the netcore application on the nRF53 network core,
3. build and load the bootloader application on the nRF53 application core.

The device is now ready.

Gateway

The communication between the computer and the swarm devices is performed via a gateway board connected via USB to the computer.

This gateway uses the mari network stack and must run the Mari gateway firmware.

The documentation to setup a Mari gateway is located here.

Python CLI script

The Python CLI script provides commands for flashing, starting and stopping user code on the device, as well as monitoring and checking the status of devices in the swarm.

The Python CLI script connects via a virtual COM port to the gateway connected to the computer.

The Python CLI script is available on PyPI. Install it using:

pip install swarmit

Print usage using swarmit --help:

Usage: swarmit [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  -p, --port TEXT                 Serial port to use to send the bitstream to
                                  the gateway. Default: /dev/ttyACM0.
  -b, --baudrate INTEGER          Serial port baudrate. Default: 1000000.
  -H, --mqtt-host TEXT            MQTT host. Default: localhost.
  -P, --mqtt-port INTEGER         MQTT port. Default: 1883.
  -T, --mqtt-use_tls              Use TLS with MQTT.
  -n, --network-id INTEGER        Marilib network ID to use. Default: 1
  -a, --adapter [edge|cloud]
                                  Choose the adapter to communicate with the
                                  gateway.  [default: edge]
  -d, --devices TEXT              Subset list of devices to interact with,
                                  separated with ,
  -v, --verbose                   Enable verbose mode.
  -V, --version                   Show the version and exit.
  -h, --help                      Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  flash    Flash a firmware to the robots.
  message  Send a custom text message to the robots.
  monitor  Monitor running applications.
  reset    Reset robots locations.
  start    Start the user application.
  status   Print current status of the robots.
  stop     Stop the user application.

Control Tower Dashboard

The Control Tower is a web-based platform (backend and frontend) that enables users to manage and monitor the testbed remotely. It provides an interface for reserving timeslots, inspecting the live status of all DotBots, and supervising experiments. The platform displays each device’s position and operational state, and offers mechanisms to flash firmware, start or stop experiments, and oversee ongoing activity across the testbed.

Setup

1. Download all requirements.

pip install swarmit[dashboard]

2. Generate a private and public key for the JWT

# Create the data directory
mkdir -p .data

# Generate Ed25519 private key
openssl genpkey -algorithm Ed25519 -out .data/private.pem

# Extract the public key
openssl pkey -in .data/private.pem -pubout -out .data/public.pem

Running the Dashboard

After the initial setup (required only once), you can launch the dashboard with all configuration options using:

python3 -m swarmit.dashboard.main --http-port 8080 --open-browser

Access the dashboard at https://localhost:8080

NOTE: Your dashboard CLI options may differ depending on your example or environment.