Abstract
Ants communicate with each other using pheromones, and their society is highly sophisticated. When foraging, they transport cooperatively with interplay of forces. The swarm is robust against changes in internal state, and shows flexibility in dealing with external problems. In this brief paper, we focus on the robot swarm that achieves cooperative transportation making use of ethanol as a substantial artificial pheromone.We also propose a swarm system with a newly developed algorithm that enables cooperative transportation of real robots. They will transport food to the nest analogous to the behaviour of a swarm of ants. Emphasis will be placed on the systematic task solution process.We present a number of experiments demonstrating the robustness and flexibility of the system and also confirming the effectiveness of the algorithm.
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Fujisawa, R., Imamura, H., Matsuno, F. (2013). Cooperative Transportation by Swarm Robots Using Pheromone Communication. In: Martinoli, A., et al. Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 83. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32723-0_40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32723-0_40
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