Built around your vision.

Designing Robot Swarms

In-house project
Funded by the University of Southampton and the University of Bristol
Website: http://swarmdesign.lenkaspace.net
Designing Robot Swarms was a 5-year research project that I worked on during my PhD and Postdoc. I needed a website that could be promoted in the academic circles, as well to robotics enthusiasts, and that clearly showcased the various aspects of the project.

Designing Robot Swarms - the home page

The website structure

The home page features a hand-drawn diagram of how various aspects of the research projects fit together. Because the project focused on the full development cycle of creating robot swarms, integration of the various parts was the most important thing to get across. Various topic keywords that a visitor can click through are organized around the diagram.

The website is divided into five main sections, accessible through the menu across the top right of the website's home page. The content of the menu changes based on which section is being viewed. This is because visitors are mostly expected to arrive to relevant pages through links shared on the web and, given significant topical differences between the sections, are more likely to want to interact with content within a given section. That being said, it is always possible to get back to the website's home page using the project name link on the top.

Content and challenges

Designing Robot Swarms - a horizontal sub-menu
Designing Robot Swarms - maths and images
The biggest challenge of making this website was taking scientific content, which is often wordy and full of equations, and making it look engaging to a visitor. This was achieved by using attention-grabbing images and diagrams instead of words whenever possible.

A section of the website also served as a landing page for Sketch BDRML, a research tool that enabled users to create design diagrams for robot swarms. You can read more about the Sketch BDRML project here.
Designing Robot Swarms - Sketch BDRML landing page