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An analytical and spatial model of foraging in a swarm of robots

Hamann, Heiko; Wörn, Heinz

Abstract:

The foraging scenario is important in robotics, because it has many different applications and demands several fundamental skills from a group of robots, such as collective exploration, shortest path finding, and efficient task allocation. Particularly for large groups of robots emergent behaviors are desired that are decentralized and based on local information only. But the design of such behaviors proved to be difficult because of the absence of a theoretical basis. In this paper, we present a macroscopic model based on partial differential equations for the foraging scenario with virtual pheromones as the medium for communication. From the model, the robot density, the food flow and a quantity describing qualitatively the stability of the behavior can be extracted. The mathematical model is validated in a simulation with a large number of robots. The predictions of the model correspond well to the simulation.


Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Fakultät für Informatik – Institut für Prozessrechentechnik, Automation und Robotik (IPR)
Publikationstyp Buchaufsatz
Publikationsjahr 2007
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator ISBN: 978-3-540-71540-5
ISSN: 0302-9743
KITopen-ID: 1000008033
Erschienen in Swarm robotics. Ed.: E. Sahin
Verlag Springer-Verlag
Seiten 43-55
Serie Lecture notes in computer science ; 4433
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