The Swarm Test Arena for Resilient Systems (STARS) is the BID4R Lab’s physical testbed for studying how large groups of simple robots can work together to produce complex, resilient behavior. Inspired by natural systems like ant colonies, bird flocks, and fish schools, STARS lets researchers take bio-inspired algorithms out of simulation and test them on real hardware. The current system includes a 32-agent swarm of small custom rovers operating in a 12 × 12 ft arena, supported by charging stations, a ground station, overhead computer-vision positioning, wireless telemetry, anti-collision, and virtual sensing. Each rover is intentionally small, inexpensive, and computationally limited, which allows us to explore questions about population size, emergence, redundancy, and distributed intelligence without relying on expensive individual robots. STARS has been developed by multidisciplinary student teams spanning Systems, Mechanical, and Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, and Data Science, giving students hands-on experience designing, integrating, and testing a complex system of systems.
