Abstract

In multi-robot applications, such as foraging or collection tasks, interference, which results from competition for space between spatially extended robots, can significantly affect the performance of the group. We present a mathematical model of foraging in a homogeneous multi-robot system, with the goal of understanding quantitatively the effects of interference. We examine two foraging scenarios: a simplified collection task where the robots only collect objects, and a foraging task, where they find objects and deliver them to some pre-specified “home” location. In the first case we find that the overall group performance improves as the system size grows; however, interference causes this improvement to be sublinear, and as a result, each robot's individual performance decreases as the group size increases. We also examine the full foraging task where robots collect objects and deliver them home. We find …

Date

September 1, 2002

Authors

Kristina Lerman, Aram Galstyan

Journal

Autonomous Robots

Volume

13

Issue

2

Pages

127-141

Publisher

Springer Netherlands