Controlling Swarms: A Programming Paradigm with Minimalistic Communication
Abstract
Inspired by natural swarms, numerous control schemes enabling robotic swarms, mobile sensor networks and other multi-agent systems to exhibit various self-organized behaviors have been suggested. In this work, we present a Wave Oriented Swarm Programming Paradigm (WOSPP) enabling the control of swarms with minimalistic communication bandwidth in a simple manner, yet allowing the emergence of diverse complex behaviors and autonomy of the swarm. Communi cation in the proposed paradigm is based on "ping"-signals inspired by strategies for communication and self organization of slime mold (dictyostelium discoideum) and fireflies (lampyridae). Signals propagate as information-waves throughout the swarm. We show that even with 1-bit bandwidth communication between agents suffices for the design of a substantial set of behaviors in the domain of essential behaviors of a collective. Ultimately, the reader will be enabled to develop and design a control scheme for individual swarms.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1804.04202,
title = {Controlling Swarms: A Programming Paradigm with Minimalistic Communication},
author = {Joshua Cherian Varughese and Hannes Hornischer and Ronald Thenius and Payam Zahadat and Franz Wotawa and Thomas Schmickl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.04202},
year = {2018}
}