Self-organized flocking with a mobile robot swarm: a novel motion control method

Abstract

In flocking, a swarm of robots moves cohesively in a common direction. Traditionally, flocking is realized using two main control rules: proximal control, which controls the cohesion of the swarm using local range-and-bearing information about neighboring robots; and alignment control, which allows the robots to align in a common direction and uses more elaborate sensing mechanisms to obtain the orientation of neighboring robots. So far, limited attention has been given to motion control, used to translate the output of these two control rules into robot motion.In this paper, we propose a novel motion control method: magnitude-dependent motion control (MDMC). Through simulations and real robot experiments, we show that, with MDMC, flocking in a random direction is possible without the need of alignment control and of robots having a preferred direction of travel. MDMC has the advantage to be implementable on very simple robots that lack the capability to detect the orientation of their neighbors. Additionally, we introduce a small proportion of robots informed about a desired direction of travel. We compare MDMC with a motion control method used in previous robotics literature, which we call magnitudeindependent motion control (MIMC), and we show that the swarms can travel longer distances in the desired direction when using MDMC instead of MIMC. Finally, we systematically study flocking under various conditions: with or without alignment control, with or without informed robots, with MDMC or with MIMC.

Swarm robotics: a review from the swarm engineering perspective

“…Stranieri et al (2011) first introduced the idea of coordinated motion without the need for all robots to perceive the orientation of their neighbors. Their work has been extended by Ferrante et al (2012), thus we present in detail only this most recent work. Ferrante et al (2012) proposed a coordinated motion behavior that, differently from other works, does not require an explicit alignment rule: the robots in the swarm use only attraction and repulsion rules.…”

“…Their work has been extended by Ferrante et al (2012), thus we present in detail only this most recent work. Ferrante et al (2012) proposed a coordinated motion behavior that, differently from other works, does not require an explicit alignment rule: the robots in the swarm use only attraction and repulsion rules. The key difference is in the novel way in which the robots translate the vector computed using the attraction and repulsion rules into wheel actuation.…”

Swarming on Random Graphs

“…In many cases this leads to the formation of swarms. This model and its variants are also often used in robotics literature [13,14]. As has been observed recently in the literature, the behavior of the interaction potential can lead to highly complex patterns [20,32,34,35].…”

Gesturing at Subswarms: Towards Direct Human Control of Robot Swarms

“…The bearing information allows each robot to adjust its orientation according to the average orientation of its neighbors. We based this flocking mechanism on [10], where robots are considered as particles that can exert virtual attractive and repulsive forces on one another. These forces are said virtual because the robots calculate them.…”