phi Clust: Pheromone-based Aggregation for Robotic Swarms
25th IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, 1 - 05 October 2018, pp.4288-4294, (Full Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
- Doi Number: 10.1109/iros.2018.8593961
- City: Madrid
- Country: Spain
- Page Numbers: pp.4288-4294
- Keywords: Swarm Robotics, Aggregation, Pheromone, Bio-inspired, CUE-BASED AGGREGATION, DECISION-MAKING, BEHAVIOR
- Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
In this paper, we proposed a pheromone-based aggregation method based on the state-of-the-art BEECLUST algorithm. We investigated the impact of pheromone-based communication on the efficiency of robotic swarms to locate and aggregate at areas with a given cue. In particular, we evaluated the impact of the pheromone evaporation and diffusion on the time required for the swarm to aggregate. In a series of simulated and real-world evaluation trials, we demonstrated that augmenting the BEECLUST method with artificial pheromone resulted in faster aggregation times.