Hormone-Inspired Self-Organization and Distributed Control of Robotic Swarms

Wei-Min Shen, Peter Will, Aram Galstyan, and Cheng-Ming Chuong. Hormone-Inspired Self-Organization and Distributed Control of Robotic Swarms. Autonomous Robots, 17(1):93–105, July 2004.

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Abstract

The control of robot swarming in a distributed manner is a difficult problem because global behaviors must emerge as a result of many local actions. This paper uses a bio-inspired control method called the Digital Hormone Model (DHM) to control the tasking and executing of robot swarms based on local communication, signal propagation, and stochastic reactions. The DHM model is probabilistic, dynamic, fault-tolerant, computationally efficient, and can be easily tasked to change global behavior. Different from most existing distributed control and learning mechanisms, DHM considers the topological structure of the organization, supports dynamic reconfiguration and self-organization, and requires no globally unique identifiers for individual robots. The paper describes the DHM and presents the experimental results on simulating biological observations in the forming of feathers, and simulating wireless communicated swarm behavior at a large scale for attacking target, forming sensor networks, self-repairing, and avoiding pitfalls in mission execution.

BibTeX Entry

@Article{	  shen2004hormone-inspired-self-organization-and-distributed-control,
  abstract	= {The control of robot swarming in a distributed manner is a
		  difficult problem because global behaviors must emerge as a
		  result of many local actions. This paper uses a
		  bio-inspired control method called the Digital Hormone
		  Model (DHM) to control the tasking and executing of robot
		  swarms based on local communication, signal propagation,
		  and stochastic reactions. The DHM model is probabilistic,
		  dynamic, fault-tolerant, computationally efficient, and can
		  be easily tasked to change global behavior. Different from
		  most existing distributed control and learning mechanisms,
		  DHM considers the topological structure of the
		  organization, supports dynamic reconfiguration and
		  self-organization, and requires no globally unique
		  identifiers for individual robots. The paper describes the
		  DHM and presents the experimental results on simulating
		  biological observations in the forming of feathers, and
		  simulating wireless communicated swarm behavior at a large
		  scale for attacking target, forming sensor networks,
		  self-repairing, and avoiding pitfalls in mission execution.
		  },
  author	= {Wei-Min Shen and Peter Will and Aram Galstyan and
		  Cheng-Ming Chuong},
  journal	= {Autonomous Robots},
  keywords	= { self organization, self-reconfiguration, modular
		  robots, distributed control, robot swarms, digital
		  hormones},
  month		= jul,
  number	= {1},
  pages		= {93--105},
  title		= {Hormone-Inspired Self-Organization and Distributed Control
		  of Robotic Swarms},
  volume	= {17},
  year		= {2004}
}