Related papers: Ant Robotics: Covering Continuous Domains by Multi…
Representation and control of the dynamics of stigmergic substances used by bio-inspired approaches is a challenge when applied to robotics. In order to overcome this challenge, this work proposes a model to coordinate swarms of robots…
A team of identical and oblivious ant-like agents - a(ge)nts - leaving pheromone traces, are programmed to jointly patrol an area modeled as a graph. They perform this task using simple local interactions, while also achieving the important…
In this paper we study the strengths and limitations of collaborative teams of simple agents. In particular, we discuss the efficient use of "ant robots" for covering a connected region on the Z^{2} grid, whose area is unknown in advance,…
In this paper, we investigate how heterogeneous multi-robot systems with different sensing capabilities can observe a domain with an apriori unknown density function. Common coverage control techniques are targeted towards homogeneous teams…
Sensor coverage is the critical multi-robot problem of maximizing the detection of events in an environment through the deployment of multiple robots. Large multi-robot systems are often composed of simple robots that are typically not…
We propose distributed algorithms to automatically deploy a team of mobile robots to partition and provide coverage of a non-convex environment. To handle arbitrary non-convex environments, we represent them as graphs. Our partitioning and…
This paper presents RANT, an ant-inspired multi-robot exploration framework for noisy, uncertain environments. A team of differential-drive robots navigates a 10 x 10 m terrain, collects noisy probe measurements of a hidden richness field,…
We consider systems made of autonomous mobile robots evolving in highly dynamic discrete environment i.e., graphs where edges may appear and disappear unpredictably without any recurrence, stability, nor periodicity assumption. Robots are…
Continuous surveillance of a spatial region using distributed robots and sensors is a well-studied application in the area of multi-agent systems. This paper investigates a practically-relevant scenario where robotic sensors are introduced…
This paper proposes a novel swarm-based control algorithm for exploration and coverage of unknown environments, while maintaining a formation that permits short-range communication. The algorithm combines two elements: swarm rules for…
In this paper, we revisit the distributed coverage control problem with multiple robots on both metric graphs and in non-convex continuous environments. Traditionally, the solutions provided for this problem converge to a locally optimal…
Future applications in environmental monitoring, delivery of services and transportation of goods motivate the study of deployment and partitioning tasks for groups of autonomous mobile agents. These tasks are achieved by recent coverage…
We consider several algorithms for exploring and filling an unknown, connected region, by simple, airborne agents. The agents are assumed to be identical, autonomous, anonymous and to have a finite amount of memory. The region is modeled as…
A model of an Ant System where ants are controlled by a spiking neural circuit and a second order pheromone mechanism in a foraging task is presented. A neural circuit is trained for individual ants and subsequently the ants are exposed to…
Pheromones are a chemical substance produced and released by ants as means of communication. In this work we present the minimum amount of pheromones necessary and sufficient for a colony of ants (identical mobile agents) to…
We present a biologically inspired design for swarm foraging based on ant's pheromone deployment, where the swarm is assumed to have very restricted capabilities. The robots do not require global or relative position measurements and the…
The limited energy capacity of individual robotic agents in a swarm often limits the possible cooperative tasks they can perform. In this work, we investigate the problem of covering an unknown connected grid environment (e.g. a maze or…
Autonomous drone swarms deployed for surveillance, environmental monitoring, and infrastructure inspection must maintain reliable coverage of critical assets despite robot failures. This requires multicoverage: each asset must be observed…
Communication processes within the human brain at different cognitive states are neither well understood nor completely characterized. We assess communication processes in the human connectome using ant colony-inspired cooperative learning…
We consider the problem of searching for an intruder in a geometric domain by utilizing multiple search robots. The domain is a simply connected orthogonal polygon with edges parallel to the cartesian coordinate axes. Each robot has a…