Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems pp 31–43Cite as

From Ants to Birds: A Novel Bio-Inspired Approach to Online Area Coverage

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics ((SPAR,volume 6))

Abstract

Online coverage path planning is a canonical multi-robot task, where the objective is to minimize the time it takes for robots to visit every point in an unknown area. Two general major approaches have been explored in the literature: a stigmergic approach, inspired by ant behavior, relies on active marking of the environment. In contrast, the collaborative approach relies instead on localization, memory of positions, and global communications. In this paper, we report on a new approach, inspired by territorial bird chirping, which borrows from both previous approaches: it relies on localization and memory, but not on global communications. We provide a detailed analytic and empirical evaluation of this model.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Agmon, N., Hazon, N., Kaminka, G.A.: The giving tree: constructing trees for efficient offline and online multi-robot coverage. Ann. Math. Artif. Intell. 52(2–4), 143–168 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Batalin, M.A., Sukhatme, G.S.: Spreading out: a local approach to multi-robot coverage. In: Asama, H., Arai, T., Fukuda, T., Hasegawa, T. (eds.) Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 5, pp. 373–382. Springer, Tokyo (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Codling, E.A., Planck, M.J., Benhamou, S.: Random walk models in biology. J. R. Soc. Interface 95(5), 813–834 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Durham, J.W., Carli, R., Frasca, P., Bullo, F.: Discrete partitioning and coverage control for gossiping robots. IEEE Trans. Robot. 28(2), 364–378 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Galceran, E., Carreras, M.: A survey on coverage path planning for robotics. Robot. Auton. Syst. 61(12), 1258–1276 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2013.09.004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Giuggioli, L., Kenkre, V.M.: Consequences of animal interactions on their dynamics: emergence of home ranges and territoriality. Mov. Ecol. 2, 1–20 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Giuggioli, L., Potts, J.R., Rubenstein, D.I., Levin, S.A.: Stigmergy, collective actions, and animal social spacing. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 110(42), 16904–16909 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hazon, N., Kaminka, G.: On redundancy, efficiency, and robustness in coverage for multiple robots. Robot. Auton. Syst. 56(12), 1102–1114 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Huberman, B.A., Glance, N.S.: Evolutionary games and computer simulations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 90(16), 7716–7718 (1993)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Koenig, S., Liu, Y.: Terrain coverage with ant robots: a simulation study. In: Autonomous Agents, pp. 600–607. ACM (2001). https://doi.org/10.1145/375735.376463

  11. Kong, C.S., Peng, N.A., Rekleitis, I.: Distributed coverage with multi-robot system. In: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Krebs, J.R.: Song and territory in the great tit parus major. In: Stonehouse, B., Perrins, C. (eds.) Evolutionary Ecology, pp. 47–62. Macmillan Education, London (1977)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Luo, C., Yang, S.X., Stacey, D.A.: Real-time path planning with deadlock avoidance of multiple cleaning robots. In: Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2003. ICRA ’03, vol. 3, pp. 4080–4085 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2003.1242224

  14. Lyons, A.J., Turner, W.C., Getz, W.M.: Home range plus: a space-time characterization of movement over real landscapes. Mov. Ecol. 1(1), 1 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Madras, N., Slade, G.: The self-avoiding walk. Springer, Berlin (2013)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  16. Mardia, K.V., Jupp, P.E.: Directional Statistics. Wiley, Chichester (2000)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Menezes, R., Martins, F., Vieira, F.E., Silva, R., Braga, M.: A model for terrain coverage inspired by ant’s alarm pheromones. In: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, SAC ’07, pp. 728–732 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1145/1244002.1244164

  18. Nagavalli, S., Lybarger, A., Luo, L., Chakraborty, N., Sycara, K.: Aligning coordinate frames in multi-robot systems with relative sensing information. In: Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 388–395. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Okabe, A., Boots, B., Sugihara, K., Chiu, S.N.: Spatial Tessellations: Concepts and Applications of Voronoi Diagrams, 2nd edn. Wiley, Chichester (2000)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Potts, J.R., Harris, S., Giuggioli, L.: Quantifying behavioral changes in territorial animals caused by sudden population declines. Am. Nat. 182(3), E73–82 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Rekleitis, I., New, A.P., Rankin, E.S., Choset, H.: Efficient boustrophedon multi-robot coverage: an algorithmic approach. Ann. Math. Artif. Intell. 52(2), 109–142 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10472-009-9120-2

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Rutishauser, S., Correll, N., Martinoli, A.: Collaborative coverage using a swarm of networked miniature robots. Robot. Auton. Syst. 57(5), 517–525 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2008.10.023

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Shettleworth, S.J.: Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, NewYork (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Suzuki, I., Yamashita, M.: Agreement on a common x-y coordinate system by a group of mobile robots. In: In proceedings of the 1996 Dagstuhl Workshop on Intelligent Robots: Sensing, Modeling and Planning, pp. 305–321. World Scientific Press (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Theraulaz, G., Bonabeau, E.: A brief history of stigmergy. Artif. Life 5(2), 97–116 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Viswanathan, G.M., Raposo, E.P., Bartumeus, F., Catalan, J., da Luz, M.G.E.: Necessary criterion for distinguishing true superdiffusion from correlated random walk processes. Phys. Rev. E 72(1), 011–111 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Wagner, I.A., Lindenbaum, M., Bruckstein, A.M.: Distributed covering by ant-robots using evaporating traces. IEEE Trans. Robot. Autom. 15(5), 918–933 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1109/70.795795

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. White, G.C., Garrott, R.A.: Analysis of Wildlife Radio-Tracking Data. Academic Press, Sand Diego (1990)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

LG thanks the support of the Bar Ilan Robotics Consortium (BIRC) and the office of the vice president during his stay at Bar Ilan University and acknowledges discussions with Adham Sabra and Alan Winfield. The research was supported in part by ISF grant #1511/12 and EPSRC grant EP/I013717/1. As always, thanks to K. Ushi.

Data Access Statement The Java code to run the stochastic simulations is openly available in the data.bris University of Bristol repository under DOI: https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.i1rl4lk2boj410h6ui4cpblfh.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, Department of Engineering Mathematics and School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS81TH, UK

    Luca Giuggioli

  2. The MAVERICK Group, Computer Science Department, Bar Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Idan Arye & Gal A. Kaminka

  3. Department of Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS81TH, UK

    Alexandro Heiblum Robles

Authors
  1. Luca Giuggioli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Idan Arye
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Alexandro Heiblum Robles
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Gal A. Kaminka
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luca Giuggioli .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Roderich Groß

  2. Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Andreas Kolling

  3. School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy (SEMTE), Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Spring Berman

  4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Emilio Frazzoli

  5. ENAC, IIE, DIAL, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Alcherio Martinoli

  6. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Fumitoshi Matsuno

  7. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Melvin Gauci

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Giuggioli, L., Arye, I., Heiblum Robles, A., Kaminka, G.A. (2018). From Ants to Birds: A Novel Bio-Inspired Approach to Online Area Coverage. In: Groß, R., et al. Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73008-0_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73008-0_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73006-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73008-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation