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

Fujisawa, Ryusuke; Dobata, Shigeto; Sugawara, Ken; Matsuno, Fumitoshi

doi:10.1007/s11721-014-0097-z

Cited by 67 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Two final examples of scale-invariant spatial features encountered in nature with direct potential applications are given by the fractal-shaped pheromone trails and by the power-law-distributed random-walk trajectories, both used to enhance exploration and foraging. Although depositing pheromone trails can be challenging for artificial artefacts (despite some attempts that have already been made with robots, see [204,205]), the pheromone concept can be used to build scale-invariant robot chains to facilitate exploration (so far, only non-scale-invariant chains have been considered, see [206]). Additionally, some attempts to implement power-law distributed random walks in robot swarms have already been made.…”

Section: Engineering Scale-free Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale invariance in natural and artificial collective systems: a review

Khaluf

Ferrante

Simoens

et al. 2017

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Self-organized collective coordinated behaviour is an impressive phenomenon, observed in a variety of natural and artificial systems, in which coherent global structures or dynamics emerge from local interactions between individual parts. If the degree of collective integration of a system does not depend on size, its level of robustness and adaptivity is typically increased and we refer to it as scale-invariant. In this review, we first identify three main types of self-organized scale-invariant systems: scale-invariant spatial structures, scale-invariant topologies and scale-invariant dynamics. We then provide examples of scale invariance from different domains in science, describe their origins and main features and discuss potential challenges and approaches for designing and engineering artificial systems with scale-invariant properties.

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Section: Engineering Scale-free Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale invariance in natural and artificial collective systems: a review

Khaluf

Ferrante

Simoens

et al. 2017

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…The use of pheromone and its evaporation and dispersion can also be simulated (Fujisawa et al 2014). In the real world, robots that move on a phosphorescent floor can use LEDs to create glowing paths (Mayet et al 2010).…”

Section: Robot Swarm Foraging In Static Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the real world, robots that move on a phosphorescent floor can use LEDs to create glowing paths (Mayet et al 2010). Alternatively, robots can deposit alcohol trails and use chemical sensors to follow them (Russell 1999;Fujisawa et al 2014) or a centralised server can store virtual pheromone deposited by robots and use a projector to display it, allowing robots to follow pheromone trails using visual sensors (Kazama et al 2005;Garnier et al 2007). In order to avoid the difficulty of using pheromone-like substances that require a specific arena set-up, a virtual pheromone is often represented by designated stationary robots that communicate pheromone levels to others nearby (e.g.…”

Section: Robot Swarm Foraging In Static Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information flow principles for plasticity in foraging robot swarms

2016

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An important characteristic of a robot swarm that must operate in the real world is the ability to cope with changeable environments by exhibiting behavioural plasticity at the collective level. For example, a swarm of foraging robots should be able to repeatedly reorganise in order to exploit resource deposits that appear intermittently in different locations throughout their environment. In this paper, we report on simulation experiments with homogeneous foraging robot teams and show that analysing swarm behaviour in terms of information flow can help us to identify whether a particular behavioural strategy is likely to exhibit useful swarm plasticity in response to dynamic environments. While it is beneficial to maximise the rate at which robots share information when they make collective decisions in a static environment, plastic swarm behaviour in changeable environments requires regulated information transfer in order to achieve a balance between the exploitation of existing information and exploration leading to acquisition of new information. We give examples of how information flow analysis can help designers to decide on robot control strategies with relevance to a number of applications explored in the swarm robotics literature.

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“…In real-robot based studies, chemical substances such as alcohol are used to simulate pheromones [6], [7], [8], [9]. Although, with this approach some of the characteristics of pheromones (evaporation and diffusion) are replicated, it still lacks important features such as: being able to use multiple chemicals, difficulty in controlling evaporation and diffusion rates and chemicals being dangerous for human health.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COSΦ: Artificial pheromone system for robotic swarms research

Arvin

Krajník

Turgut

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

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Pheromone-based communication is one of the most effective ways of communication widely observed in nature. It is particularly used by social insects such as bees, ants and termites; both for inter-agent and agentswarm communications. Due to its effectiveness; artificial pheromones have been adopted in multi-robot and swarm robotic systems for more than a decade. Although, pheromonebased communication was implemented by different means like chemical (use of particular chemical compounds) or physical (RFID tags, light, sound) ways, none of them were able to replicate all the aspects of pheromones as seen in nature. In this paper, we propose a novel artificial pheromone system that is reliable, accurate and it uses off-the-shelf components only -LCD screen and low-cost USB camera. The system allows to simulate several pheromones and their interactions and to change parameters of the pheromones (diffusion, evaporation, etc.) on the fly allowing for controllable experiments. We tested the performance of the system using the Colias platform in single-robot and swarm scenarios. To allow the swarm robotics community to use the system for their research, we provide it as a freely available open-source package.

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

Cited by 67 publications

References 22 publications

Scale invariance in natural and artificial collective systems: a review

Scale invariance in natural and artificial collective systems: a review

Information flow principles for plasticity in foraging robot swarms

COSΦ: Artificial pheromone system for robotic swarms research

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

Cited by 67 publications

References 22 publications

Scale invariance in natural and artificial collective systems: a review

Scale invariance in natural and artificial collective systems: a review

Information flow principles for plasticity in foraging robot swarms

COS&#x03A6;: Artificial pheromone system for robotic swarms research

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COSΦ: Artificial pheromone system for robotic swarms research