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Collective Robotics
Swarm Robotics
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Collective robotics
Why invest in collections of robots, why not build a reliable
individual robot?
- Task difficult (or impossible) for one robot- Can be performed
better by many- Redundancy task more likely to be completed-
Simplicity many cheaper robots instead of one
expensive one.
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What kinds of collections?
Possibilities range from- remote controlled robots
- centrally controlled robots- completely autonomous robots
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Advantages of robot collectives shown in Environmental
exploration
Materials transport Coordinated sensing collective cooperates
to
provide maximal sensor coverage of movingtarget.
Robot soccer Search and Rescue
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Swarm intelligence
Swarm intelligence is any attempt to design
algorithms or distributed problem-solvingdevices inspired by the
collective behaviour of social insect colonies and other
animalsocieties
Bonabeau, Dorigo and Theraulaz (1999)
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N atural swarms
Decentralised no-one in controlIndividuals are simple and
autonomous
Local communication and controlCooperative behaviours emerge
through self-organisation
e.g. repairing damage to nest, foraging for food,caring for
brood
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Self-organisation Organisation increases in complexity,
without
external guidance Self-organising systems often display
emergent
properties self-organisation is a set of dynamical mechanisms
whereby
structures appear at the global level of a system from
interactionsamong its lower-level components. The rules specifying
the interactionsamong the systems constituent units are executed on
the basis of
purely local information, without reference to the global
pattern, whichis an emergent property of the system rather than a
property imposed upon the system by an external ordering
influence
(Bonabeau, Dorigo and Theraulaz, 1999)
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Emergence An emergent property, e.g. pattern formation, from
more basic constituents An emergent behaviour can appear as a
result of
the interaction of components of the system E.g. flocking, or
organisation of ant colony
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Real life example of self-organised behaviour in humans
Emergence of paths across grassy area Most popular paths are
reinforced
Counter example e.g. a team of carpenters building a house.not
self-organised.
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Swarm robotics
Inspired by self-organisation of social insectsUsing local
methods of control and communication Local control: autonomous
operation Local communication: avoids bottlenecks Scalable new
robots can be added, or fail without need
for recalibration Simplicity cheap, expendable robots
Self-organisationDecentralisation
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Disadvantages of centralised
control and communication.Central control: failure of controller
impliesfailure of whole system
Robot to robot communication becomes verycomplex as number of
robots increases.Communication bottlenecks
Adding new robots means changing thecommunication and control
system
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Applications of swarm approach
Some tasks are particularly suited to group of expendable simple
robotse.g. - cleaning up toxic waste- exploring an unknown planet-
pushing large objects
- surveillance and other military applications
