Vito Trianni (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR Rome), “Emergence and Heterogeneity in Minimalist Robot Swarms”

Far-reaching perspectives in swarm robotics consider robots that are minimalist in their sensing, communication and computation, but are deployed in thousands to collaborate towards the accomplishment of tasks distributed in space and time. Generally speaking, future robot swarms might face harsh operating conditions where little communication is possible and no external infrastructure is available. These robots might not be able to efficiently communicate with a central controller and might not have the perceptual and computational abilities to self-localise or precisely plan their movements. It is therefore necessary to study collaborative strategies that do not rely on complex control and interaction rules. In this talk, I will present studies about minimalist approaches to collective behaviours based on random walks and simple communication systems. I will introduce the concept of Adaptive Random Walks as a tool to design simple emergent behaviours in minimalist robot swarms, and present the case of team formation and aggregation, showing how heterogeneity in the swarm can be beneficial to improve efficiency while maintaining the complexity low. I will then discuss minimal quorum sensing strategies, and discuss which communication protocol provide benefits for group coordination.

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