Understanding the Role of Recruitment in Robot Foraging

Homepage: http://lenkaspace.net/index.php/lab/swarmSystems/recruitmentInRobotForaging
Started: 1st June 2013
Ended: 24th August 2013
Research Team: Lenka Pitonakova
Investigators: Seth Bullock, Richard Crowder

Robots foraging

When is it profitable for robots to forage collectively? Here we compare the ability of swarms of simulated bio-inspired robots to forage either collectively or individually. The conditions under which recruitment (where one robot alerts another to the location of a resource) is profitable are characterised, and explained in terms of the impact of three types of interference between robots (physical, environmental, and informational). Key factors determining swarm performance include resource abundance, the reliability of shared informa- tion, time limits on foraging, and the ability of robots to cope with congestion around discovered resources and around the base location. Additional experiments introducing odometry noise indicate that collective foragers are more susceptible to odometry error.

Computational Modelling Group

Understanding the Role of Recruitment in Robot Foraging

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