Swarm-intelligent Robotics in Prey Retrieval Tasks
Groß Roderich

Abstract:

In this work a swarm-robotic system, called swarm-bot, is introduced. A swarm-bot is a self-assembling and self-organizing artifact composed of a swarm of simple autonomous mobile robots, called s-bots that are able to establish (and to release) physical connections between each other and to other objects. The swarm-bot approach emphasizes aspects like decentralized control architectures, self-assembling abilities, locality and simplicity of interactions among s-bots and between s-bots and the environment, emergence of order, flexibility and robustness. This work addresses the problem of controlling swarm-bots or a swarm of simple s-bots in prey retrieval and collective transport tasks. We focus on tasks concerning the transport of a single prey by a group of s-bots. To accomplish the tasks efficiently, the cooperation of several group members is required. Methods from the field of Evolutionary Computation are applied and studied to design control policies solving the underlying tasks. Presently, experiments are carried out using a 3D physics simulator. The simulated s-bot model is an approximation of a real s-bot, currently manufactured in the scope of the SWARM-BOTS project. Swarms and swarm-bots composed of real s-bots are planned to be studied as soon as they are available.