Trail formation using large swarms of minimal robots

Pere Molins, Sabine Hauert
2019 Proceedings of the 34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing - SAC '19  
General rights This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: ABSTRACT Recent advances in robotics allow for the creation of swarms that work in large numbers. This typically requires low-cost robots with restricted sensing and noisy motion. Developing swarm controllers that are robust to such constraints could lead to applications ranging from outdoor exploration to
more » ... icine. In particular, we demonstrate that a large swarm of minimal robots, using only random motion and limited sensing capabilities, can form trails from a source to an area of interest using a mechanism inspired by diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA). We further show that the nearest area of interest is selected, and that the formed trails can avoid bypass. Validation is performed in simulation and reality using a swarm of up to 100 robots.
doi:10.1145/3297280.3297374 dblp:conf/sac/MolinsH19 fatcat:lukoyozx35ghdgjqsnp6d4zbge