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Abstract

This paper provides anecdotal evidence that the group behavior exhibited by a collective of robots under reactive control is as much due to the design of their internal behaviors as to the external conditions imposed by the environment in which the robot collective operate. Our argument is advanced through the examination of a set of well-known collective robotics tasks that involve, in one form or another, the movement of materials, namely, foraging, transport, and construction. We demonstrate that these seemingly different tasks can all be achieved by one controller that employs behaviors identical across the task domains but parameterized with a couple of task-specific constants. The implementation of the study is conducted with the help of the TeamBots robot simulator.

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© 2005 Springer

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Cherry, C., Zhang, H. (2005). Toward Versatility of Multi-Robot Systems. In: Parker, L.E., Schneider, F.E., Schultz, A.C. (eds) Multi-Robot Systems. From Swarms to Intelligent Automata Volume III. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3389-3_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3389-3_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-3388-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-3389-6

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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