Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management

Alfeo, Antonio L.; Ferrer, Eduardo Castelló; Lizarribar, Yago; Grignard, Arnaud; Pastor, Luis Alonso; Sleeper, Dylan T.; Cimino, Mario G. C. A.; Lepri, Bruno; Vaglini, Gigliola; Larson, Kent; Dorigo, Marco; Pentland, Alex

doi:10.1109/icra.2019.8794020

Cited by 37 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…We outlined recent approaches to foraging and highlighted two complementary strategies: self-organization and formal analysis. Self-organized, bioinspired approaches continue to dominate swarm foraging research, especially for more practical, though still aspirational, applications such as refuse collection [39], and resource collection [4]. Recent analytical approaches have provided theoretical bounds on efficiency [35,63], fault tolerance [104,105], and even the conditions required for emergent behavior [67••].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Arvin et al [60] implemented a series of low-cost robots capable of following light pheromones. Steels [3] proposed the use of radioactive materials to create physical trails and Alfeo et al [39] suggested RFID tags.…”

Section: Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Alfeo et al [39] framed the problem of gathering refuse in a complex urban environment as a multiple-place foraging task. The authors used the structure provided by the environment along with stigmergy to develop a self-organizing solution that performs better than a preplanned strategy.…”

Section: Self-organizing Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Swarm Foraging Review: Closing the Gap Between Proof and Practice

et al. 2020

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Purpose of Review We review recent research on swarm robot foraging and contextualize it with foundational work. Recent work can be divided into two complementary camps: self-organizing algorithms that provide practical gains and analytical research focus on theoretical proofs. Recent Findings Encouragingly, the convergence between theory and practice is evident in analytical work on the scaling of transportation networks and in behavioral grammars that give formal insight into emergent properties of foraging. Augmented reality has enabled virtual pheromones to be used with hardware, blurring the line between physical and simulation experiments. Summary In this review we highlight bio-inspired and self-organizing approaches to swarm foraging and contrast them with approaches that can provide theoretical proofs, but which abstract away important features from foraging in real-world environments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Swarm Foraging Review: Closing the Gap Between Proof and Practice

et al. 2020

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“…The tags store data transmitted by robots passing above and elicited the corresponding behaviour depending on the data transmitted previously, which works like pheromones in nature. One of the recent works using RFID tags (Alfeo et al, 2019) show its usability in real-world application. This work utilised RFID tag-based pheromone communication for autonomous waste management in urban environment.…”

Section: Pheromone In Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bio-inspired artificial pheromone system for swarm robotics applications

Qiu

Turgut

et al. 2020

Adaptive Behavior

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Pheromones are chemical substances released into the environment by an individual animal, which elicit stereotyped behaviours widely found across the animal kingdom. Inspired by the effective use of pheromones in social insects, pheromonal communication has been adopted to swarm robotics domain using diverse approaches such as alcohol, RFID tags and light. COSΦ is one of the light-based artificial pheromone systems which can emulate realistic pheromones and environment properties through the system. This article provides a significant improvement to the state-of-the-art by proposing a novel artificial pheromone system that simulates pheromones with environmental effects by adopting a model of spatio-temporal development of pheromone derived from a flow of fluid in nature. Using the proposed system, we investigated the collective behaviour of a robot swarm in a bio-inspired aggregation scenario, where robots aggregated on a circular pheromone cue with different environmental factors, that is, diffusion and pheromone shift. The results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed pheromone system for use in swarm robotic applications.

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“…For instance, a grid of radio-frequency-identification (RFID) tags is embedded into the floor on which the robots operate. Robots read and write the pheromone information on these tags using special equipment at close proximity (Khaliq et al, 2014 ; Khaliq and Saffiotti, 2015 ; Alfeo et al, 2019 ). However, the robots can read only one RFID tag at a time and this makes it difficult to conceive strategies based on pheromone gradients.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phormica: Photochromic Pheromone Release and Detection System for Stigmergic Coordination in Robot Swarms

et al. 2020

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Stigmergy is a form of indirect communication and coordination in which agents modify the environment to pass information to their peers. In nature, animals use stigmergy by, for example, releasing pheromone that conveys information to other members of their species. A few systems in swarm robotics research have replicated this process by introducing the concept of artificial pheromone. In this paper, we present Phormica, a system to conduct experiments in swarm robotics that enables a swarm of e-puck robots to release and detect artificial pheromone. Phormica emulates pheromone-based stigmergy thanks to the ability of robots to project UV light on the ground, which has been previously covered with a photochromic material. As a proof of concept, we test Phormica on three collective missions in which robots act collectively guided by the artificial pheromone they release and detect. Experimental results indicate that a robot swarm can effectively self-organize and act collectively by using stigmergic coordination based on the artificial pheromone provided by Phormica.

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Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management

Cited by 37 publications

References 30 publications

Swarm Foraging Review: Closing the Gap Between Proof and Practice

Swarm Foraging Review: Closing the Gap Between Proof and Practice

Bio-inspired artificial pheromone system for swarm robotics applications

Phormica: Photochromic Pheromone Release and Detection System for Stigmergic Coordination in Robot Swarms

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