Darwinian Swarm Exploration under Communication Constraints: Initial Deployment and Fault-Tolerance Assessment

M. S. Couceiro, C. M. Figueiredo, R. P. Rocha and N. M. F. Ferreira

Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 62(4), pp. 528-544, Elsevier, Apr. 2014. DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2013.12.009

Abstract

In most real multi-robot applications, such as search-and-rescue, cooperative robots have to move to complete their tasks while maintaining communication among themselves without the aid of a communication infrastructure. However, initially deploying and ensuring a mobile ad-hoc network in real and complex environments is an arduous task since the strength of the connection between two nodes (i.e., robots) can change rapidly in time or even disappear. An extension of the Particle Swarm Optimization to multi-robot applications has been previously proposed and denoted as Robotic Darwinian PSO (RDPSO). This paper contributes with a further extension of the RDPSO, thus integrating two research aspects: i) an autonomous, realistic and fault-tolerant initial deployment strategy denoted as Extended Spiral of Theodorus (EST); and ii) a fault-tolerant distributed search to prevent communication network splits. The exploring agents, denoted as scouts, are autonomously deployed using supporting agents, denoted as rangers. Experimental results with 15 physical scouts and 3 physical rangers show that the algorithm converges to the optimal solution faster and more accurately using the EST approach over the random deployment strategy. Also, a more fault-tolerant strategy clearly influences the time needed to converge to the final solution, but is less susceptible to robot failures.

Keywords ─ Swarm robotics, communication constraints, fault-tolerance, initial deployment, networked robot systems.

Full text

You may ask Rui P. Rocha for an electronic copy of this publication’s full text by e-mail:
.

Please select for your message’s subject ‘Requesting Rui Rocha’s electronic copy’ and include on the message’s body your full name, title and affiliation, why do you need to access the publication and the BibTeX information below.

BibTeX

@ARTICLE(Couceiro_et_al_14b,

AUTHOR = "M. S. Couceiro and C. M. Figueiredo and R. P. Rocha and N. M. F. Ferreira",

TITLE = "Darwinian Swarm Exploration under Communication Constraints: Initial Deployment and Fault-Tolerance Assessment",

JOURNAL = "Robotics and Autonomous Systems",

VOLUME = "62",

NUMBER = "4",

YEAR = "2014",

MONTH = "Apr.",

PAGES = "528-544"

)

(top of the page)

Last update: 09/04/2014