Self-Organized Aggregation Triggers Collective Decision Making in a Group of Cockroach-Like Robots

Abstract

Self-amplification processes are at the origin of several collective decision phenomena in insect societies. Understanding these processes requires linking individual behavioral rules of insects to a choice dynamics at the colony level. In a homogeneous environment, the German cockroach Blattella germanica displays self-amplified aggregation behavior. In a heterogeneous environment where several shelters are present, groups of cockroaches collectively select one of them. In this article, we demonstrate that the restriction of the self-amplified aggregation behavior to distinct zones in the environment can explain the emergence of a collective decision at the level of the group. This hypothesis is tested with robotics experiments and dedicated computer simulations. We show that the collective decision is influenced by the available spaces to explore and to aggregate in, by the size of the population involved in the aggregation process and by the probability of encounter zones while the robots explore the environment. We finally discuss these results from both a biological and a robotics point of view.

Swarm robotics: a review from the swarm engineering perspective

“…Two consensus achievement behaviors are proposed: in the first, the robots simply follow the robot closest to a target, resulting in a decision based on the spatial distribution of the swarm; in the second, the robots vote, using a majority rule, to decide which target to follow. Garnier et al (2005Garnier et al ( , 2009) studied consensus achievement in cockroaches by using a swarm of robots to replicate the experiment by Amé et al (2006) (see Fig. 12(a)).…”

Reconfigurable swarm robots for structural health monitoring: a brief review

“…This means, that all robots must agree on common decision to determine their path and target. Communication between robots is made directly by exchanging messages (e.g., voting) or indirect communication using local sensor information (e.g., follow nearest robot) (Montes De Oca et al 2010;Garnier et al 2009).…”

Imitation of Honeybee Aggregation with Collective Behavior of Swarm Robots.

“…This behavior is inspired from cockroaches aggregation behavior. 16 The periodic resting time of cockroaches are changed by cluster's size. This resting time is prolonged based on number of other stationary cockroaches.…”

“…Similar effects of the resting time were reported in other aggregation researches. 16,18 A group of six robots could aggregate at the light area in 200 sec. …”

“…Schmickl et al 15 presented a cue based aggregation of simple robots that used limit communication. Garnier et al 16 simulated cockroaches' aggregation behavior with micro robots. Group of these robots were deployed into circular white arena for 60 minutes.…”