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Achieving tasks with a multiple robot system will require a control system that is both simple and scalable as the number of robots increases. Collective b e h a vior as demonstrated by social insects is a form of decentralized control that may prove useful in controlling multiple robots. Nature's several examples of collective behavior have motivated our approach to controlling a multiple robot system using a group behavior. Our mechanisms, used to invoke the group behavior, allow the system of robots to perform tasks without centralized control or explicit communication. We h a ve constructed a system of ve mobile robots capable of achieving simple collective tasks to verify the results obtained in simulation. The results suggest that decentralized control without explicit communication can be used in performing cooperative tasks requiring a collective behavior.

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In this paper we present an approach to controlling transitions in multi-robot tasks which have been modelled as a linear series of steps. A box-pushing task is described as a sequence of sub-tasks with a separate controller designed for each step using finite state automata theory. Perceptual cues are formed by concatenating binary variables which represent locally sensed stimuli into boolean vectors used to specifiy transitions between sub-task steps. The approach is designed f o r a redundant set of homogeneous mobile robots equipped with simple sensors and stimulus-response behaviours.A set of perceptual cues used in box-pushing are designed and tested on 10 physical mobile robots. Ii is argued that perceptual cues and finite state automata offers a new approach to environment-specific task modelling in collective robotics.