This thesis presents a novel design of an open-source millirobot utilized for swarm behaviour studies and a novel swarm localization algorithm to enable human-swarm interaction (HSI). Millirobots have increasingly become popular over the past years in swarm robotics research. However, currently existing millirobots for swarm robotics research are typically custom made, with few off-the-shelf components, and exhibit integral design. Furthermore, as these robots have become smaller in size, their sensory capabilities and battery capacities have been reduced. This thesis proposes a new millirobot design that addresses the abovementioned limitations.

For swarm robots to be successfully integrated into real world applications, HSI must be enabled;​ a human supervisor monitors and provides meaningful commands to the robots. One method of enabling HSI is through localization. This thesis proposes a novel localization method to estimate the swarm topology without the use of any external sensors such as overhead cameras monitoring the robots.