Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Published in:
A Bearing-Only Pattern Formation Algorithm for Swarm Robotics Read chapter Read first chapter

2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Random Walks in Swarm Robotics: An Experiment with Kilobots

Authors : Cristina Dimidov, Giuseppe Oriolo, Vito Trianni

Published in: Swarm Intelligence

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

Random walks represent fundamental search strategies for both animal and robots, especially when there are no environmental cues that can drive motion, or when the cognitive abilities of the searching agent do not support complex localisation and mapping behaviours. In swarm robotics, random walks are basic building blocks for the individual behaviour and support the emergent collective pattern. However, there has been limited account for the correct parameterisation to be used in different search scenarios, and the relationship between search efficiency and information transfer within the swarm has been often overlooked. In this study, we analyse the efficiency of random walk patterns for a swarm of Kilobots searching a static target in two different environmental conditions entailing a bounded or an open space. We study the search efficiency and the ability to spread information within the swarm through numerical simulations and real robot experiments, and we determine what kind of random walk best fits each experimental scenario.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe




 

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
previous chapter Population Coding: A New Design Paradigm for Embodied Distributed Systems
next chapter Synthesizing Rulesets for Programmable Robotic Self-assembly: A Case Study Using Floating Miniaturized Robots
Footnotes
1
Given the size of the robots and characteristics of the random walks, we have found particularly impractical to run experiments in the unbounded arena scenario due to the small robot arena available for experimentation with Kilobots.
 
Literature
1.
Baronchelli, A., Radicchi, F.: Lévy flights in human behaviour and cognition. Chaos Solitons Fractals 56(C), 101–105 (2013)CrossRef
2.
Bartumeus, F., da Luz, M., Viswanathan, G., Catalan, J.: Animal search strategies: a quantitative random-walk analysis. Ecology 86(11), 3078–3087 (2005)CrossRef
3.
Berman, S., Kumar, V., Nagpal, R.: Design of control policies for spatially inhomogeneous robot swarms with application to commercial pollination. In: Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2011), pp. 378–385. IEEE (2011)
4.
Blackwell, P.: Random diffusion models for animal movement. Ecol. Model. 100(1–3), 87–102 (1997)CrossRef
5.
Campo, A., Garnier, S., Dédriche, O., Zekkri, M., Dorigo, M.: Self-organized discrimination of resources. PLoS ONE 6(5), e19888 (2011)CrossRef
6.
Codling, E., Plank, M., Benhamou, S.: Random walk models in biology. J. Roy. Soc. Interface 5(25), 813–834 (2008)CrossRef
7.
Edwards, A., Phillips, R., Watkins, N., Freeman, M., Murphy, E., et al.: Revisiting Lévy flight search patterns of wandering albatrosses, bumblebees and deer. Nature 449(7165), 1044–1048 (2007)CrossRef
8.
Fujisawa, R., Dobata, S.: Lévy walk enhances efficiency of group foraging in pheromone-communicating swarm robots. In: 2013 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII), pp. 808–813. IEEE (2013)
9.
Hecker, J., Moses, M.: Beyond pheromones: evolving error-tolerant, flexible, and scalable ant-inspired robot swarms. Swarm Intell. 9(1), 1–28 (2015)CrossRef
10.
Hills, T., Todd, P., Lazer, D., Redish, A., Couzin, I.: The cognitive search research group: exploration versus exploitation in space, mind, and society. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19(1), 46–54 (2015)CrossRef
11.
Humphries, N., Queiroz, N., Dyer, J., Pade, N., Musyl, M., et al.: Environmental context explains Lévy and brownian movement patterns of marine predators. Nature 465(7301), 1066–1069 (2010)CrossRef
12.
Kato, S., Jones, M.: An extended family of circular distributions related to wrapped Cauchy distributions via Brownian motion. Bernoulli 19(1), 154–171 (2013)MathSciNetCrossRefMATH
13.
Palyulin, V., Chechkin, A., Metzler, R.: Lévy flights do not always optimize random blind search for sparse targets. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 111(8), 2931–2936 (2014)CrossRef
14.
Reina, A., Miletitch, R., Dorigo, M., Trianni, V.: A quantitative micro–macro link for collective decisions: the shortest path discovery/selection example. Swarm Intell. 9(2–3), 75–102 (2015)CrossRef
15.
Rubenstein, M., Ahler, C., Hoff, N., Cabrera, A., Nagpal, R.: Kilobot: a low cost robot with scalable operations designed for collective behaviors. Robot. Auton. Syst. 62(7), 966–975 (2014)CrossRef
16.
Sutantyo, D., Kernbach, S., Levi, P., Nepomnyashchikh, V.: Multi-robot searching algorithm using Lévy flight and artificial potential field. In: IEEE International Workshop on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR), pp. 1–6. IEEE (2010)
17.
Trianni, V., Campo, A.: Fundamental collective behaviors in swarm robotics. In: Kacprzyk, J., Pedrycz, W. (eds.) Springer Handbook of Computational Intelligence, pp. 1377–1394. Springer, Berlin, Germany (2015)CrossRef
18.
Trianni, V., De Simone, D., Reina, A., Baronchelli, A.: Emergence of consensus in a multi-robot network: from abstract models to empirical validation. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 1(1), 348–353 (2016)CrossRef
19.
Valentini, G., Ferrante, E., Hamann, H., Dorigo, M.: Collective decision with 100 kilobots: speed versus accuracy in binary discrimination problems. Auton. Agents Multi-Agent Syst. 30, 1–28 (2015)
20.
Viswanathan, G., Afanasyev, V., Buldyrev, S., Havlin, S., da Luz, M., et al.: Lévy flights in random searches. Phys. A: Stat. Mech. Appl. 282(1–2), 1–12 (2000)CrossRef
21.
Viswanathan, G., Raposo, E., da Luz, M.: Lévy flights and superdiffusion in the context of biological encounters and random searches. Phys. Life Rev. 5(3), 133–150 (2008)CrossRef
22.
Metadata
Title
Random Walks in Swarm Robotics: An Experiment with Kilobots
Authors
Cristina Dimidov
Giuseppe Oriolo
Vito Trianni
Copyright Year
2016
Book
Swarm Intelligence

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44426-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-44427-7

Copyright Year: 2016

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44427-7_16

Premium Partner

    Image Credits