title: Designing collective behavior in a termite-inspired robot construction team.
abstract: Complex systems are characterized by many independent components whose low-level actions produce collective high-level results. Predicting high-level results given low-level rules is a key open challenge; the inverse problem, finding low-level rules that give specific outcomes, is in general still less understood. We present a multi-agent construction system inspired by mound-building termites, solving such an inverse problem. A user specifies a desired structure, and the system automatically generates low-level rules for independent climbing robots that guarantee production of that structure. Robots use only local sensing and coordinate their activity via the shared environment. We demonstrate the approach via a physical realization with three autonomous climbing robots limited to onboard sensing. This work advances the aim of engineering complex systems that achieve specific human-designed goals.
authors: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors: Justin
authors: J
authors: Werfel
authors: Kirstin
authors: K
authors: Petersen
authors: Radhika
authors: R
authors: Nagpal
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D057005:Bioengineering / Q000379:methods*; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D005160:Facility Design and Construction / Q000379:methods*; D020049:Isoptera; D008399:Mass Behavior; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*