A Scalable And Distributed Model for Self-organization and Self-healing

Michael Rubenstein and Wei-Min Shen. A Scalable And Distributed Model for Self-organization and Self-healing. In Proc. 2008 Intl. Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Estoril, Portugal, May 2008.

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Abstract

As the ability to produce a large number of small, simple roboticagents improves, it becomes essential to control the behavior ofthese agents in such a way that the sum of their actions gives riseto the desired overall result. These agents are modeled ashomogeneous, distributed robots, with only one simple shortrange sensor. Our simple agents are tasked to form and hold adesired swarm shape, independent of the total number of agents.If this shape is damaged by the removal of some of the agents, theremaining agents will recover the former shape, but on a smallerscale. These shapes can also have a pattern such as a picture ordrawing displayed on them by controlling the individual robotscolor, symbolically representing the differentiation of agentswithin the swarm. This pattern will resize to fit the existingswarm. With the ability to synchronize in time, the swarm gainsthe ability to change the pattern displayed, resulting in a movingimage.

BibTeX Entry

@InProceedings{	  rubenstein2008a-scalable-and-distributed-model-for-self-organization-and-self-healing,
  abstract	= {As the ability to produce a large number of small, simple robotic
agents improves, it becomes essential to control the behavior of
these agents in such a way that the sum of their actions gives rise
to the desired overall result. These agents are modeled as
homogeneous, distributed robots, with only one simple short
range sensor. Our simple agents are tasked to form and hold a
desired swarm shape, independent of the total number of agents.
If this shape is damaged by the removal of some of the agents, the
remaining agents will recover the former shape, but on a smaller
scale. These shapes can also have a pattern such as a picture or
drawing displayed on them by controlling the individual robots
color, symbolically representing the differentiation of agents
within the swarm. This pattern will resize to fit the existing
swarm. With the ability to synchronize in time, the swarm gains
the ability to change the pattern displayed, resulting in a moving
image.},
  address	= {Estoril, Portugal},
  author	= {Michael Rubenstein and Wei-Min Shen},
  booktitle	= aamas-08,
  month		= may,
  title		= {A Scalable And Distributed Model for Self-organization and Self-healing},
  year		= {2008}
}