Hardware
Click on a part in the picture for more information about it, or click here for a complete parts list.
IR Beacon Emitter
The robots communicate to each other with IR (Infrared) signals. Each robot has a beacon emitter, a tag emitter and four receivers. The transmitter on the top is the beacon emitter. Its range is about a foot away from the the robot in all directions. The Ants use this transmitter to transmit their "mood", what team they are on, where food is, etc. The signal is transmitted continuously twice a second, so errors or missed signals don't matter so much. Remember the whole point is to make the community robust so that environmental perturbations are not a major problem. As opposed to engineering a perfect system, you engineer a pretty good system, but build lots of them.
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