Self-organized coordinated motion in groups of physically connected robots.
An important goal of collective robotics is the design of control systems that allow groups of robots to accomplish common tasks by coordinating without a centralized control. In this paper, we study how a group of physically assembled robots can display coherent behavior on the basis of a simple neural controller that has access only to local sensory information. This controller is synthesized through artificial evolution in a simulated environment in order to let the robots display coordinated-motion behaviors. The evolved controller proves to be robust enough to allow a smooth transfer from simulated to real robots. Additionally, it generalizes to new experimental conditions, such as different sizes/shapes of the group and/or different connection mechanisms. In all these conditions the performance of the neural controller in real robots is comparable to the one obtained in simulation.
Baldassarre
Gianluca
G
Laboratory of Autonomous Robotics and Artificial Life, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 00185 Rome, Italy. gianluca.baldassarre@istc.cnr.it
Trianni
Vito
V
Bonani
Michael
M
Mondada
Francesco
F
Dorigo
Marco
M
Nolfi
Stefano
S
D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D032701:Biomimetics / Q000379:methods*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D009038:Motion; D009068:Movement; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*