Designing pheromone communication in swarm robotics: Group foraging behavior mediated by chemical substance

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_BB8CC7AB97C3
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Designing pheromone communication in swarm robotics: Group foraging behavior mediated by chemical substance
Journal
Swarm Intelligence
Author(s)
Fujisawa R., Dobata S., Sugawara K., Matsuno F.
ISSN
1935-3820 (electronic)
ISSN-L
1935-3812
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2014
Volume
8
Number
3
Pages
227-246
Language
english
Abstract
In swarm robotics, communication among the robots is essential. Inspired by biological swarms using pheromones, we propose the use of chemical compounds to realize group foraging behavior in robot swarms. We designed a fully autonomous robot, and then created a swarm using ethanol as the trail pheromone allowing the robots to communicate with one another indirectly via pheromone trails. Our group recruitment and cooperative transport algorithms provide the robots with the required swarm behavior. We conducted both simulations and experiments with real robot swarms, and analyzed the data statistically to investigate any changes caused by pheromone communication in the performance of the swarm in solving foraging recruitment and cooperative transport tasks. The results show that the robots can communicate using pheromone trails, and that the improvement due to pheromone communication may be non-linear, depending on the size of the robot swarm.
Keywords
Swarm robotics, Social insects, Pheromone communication
Web of science
Create date
16/10/2014 8:28
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:29
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