Multi-Robot Foraging Based on Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest

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

In Proc. of IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2012 (IROS 2012), Vilamoura, Portugal, pp. 801-806, Oct. 7-12, 2012.

Abstract

This paper presents a collective foraging algorithm designed to simulate natural selection in a group of swarm robots. The Robotic Darwinian Particle Swarm Optimization (RDPSO) previously proposed is improved using fractional calculus theory and evaluated on real low-cost mobile robots performing a distributed foraging task. This work aims at evaluating this novel exploration strategy, by studying the performance of the algorithm within a population of up to 12 robots, under communication constraints. In order to simulate the maximum allowed communication distance, robots were provided with a list of their teammates’ addresses. Experimental results show that only 4 robots are needed to accomplish the proposed mission and, independently on the number of robots, maximum communication distance and fractional coefficient, the optimal solution is achieved in approximately 90% of the experiments.

Index Terms — Swarm robotics, particle swarm optimization, fractional calculus, ad hoc communication, foraging.

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BibTeX

@INPROCEEDINGS(Couceiro_et_al_12i,

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

TITLE = "Multi-Robot Foraging Based on Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest",

BOOKTITLE = "Proc. of 2012 IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2012)",

ADDRESS = "Vilamoura, Portugal",

YEAR = "2012",

MONTH = "Oct.",

PAGES = "801-806"

)

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Last update: 26/12/2012