A significant challenge in control theory and technology is to devise agile and less resource-intensive experiments for evaluating the performance and feasibility of control algorithms for the collective coordination of large-scale complex systems. Many new methodologies are based on macroscopic representations of the emerging system behavior, and can be easily validated only through numerical simulations, because of the inherent hurdle of developing full scale experimental platforms. In this paper, we introduce a novel hybrid set-up for testing swarm robotics techniques, focusing on the collective motion of robotic swarms. This hybrid apparatus combines both real differential drive robots and virtual agents to create a heterogeneous swarm of tunable size. We validate the methodology by extending to higher dimensions, and investigating experimentally, continuification-based control methods for swarms. Our study demonstrates the versatility and effectiveness of the platform for conducting large-scale swarm robotics experiments. Also, it contributes new theoretical insights into control algorithms exploiting continuification approaches.

翻译：控制理论与技术面临的一个重大挑战是设计灵活且资源消耗较少的实验，用于评估大规模复杂系统集体协调控制算法的性能和可行性。许多新方法基于系统涌现行为的宏观表征，但由于开发全尺寸实验平台的固有障碍，这些方法通常只能通过数值模拟进行验证。本文介绍了一种用于测试群体机器人技术的新型混合实验平台，重点关注机器人群体的集体运动。该混合装置结合了真实差分驱动机器人和虚拟智能体，构建了一个规模可调的异构群体。我们通过将方法扩展到更高维度，并对基于连续化的群体控制方法进行实验研究来验证该方法的有效性。该研究证明了该平台在大规模群体机器人实验中的通用性和有效性，同时也为利用连续化方法的控制算法带来了新的理论见解。