Collective Decision Making of a Robot Swarm

Drawing inspiration from naturalistic systems, such as house-hunting honeybees, we aim to implement distributed robotics solutions. Swarm robotics is thought to be one of the key technologies in future applications. For example, autonomous robust robot groups have the potential to improve exploration and other tasks in hazardous environments that are inhospitable or inaccessible to humans or larger robots. Combining decision theory and artificial decision-making systems, we compare theoretical models and empirical data to identify possible real world applications. Intriguingly, simple individual robot capabilities may lead to complex behaviour on the group level. Using the Kilobot platform as testbed, our objective is to uncover the underlying mechanisms in large groups of interacting robots reaching consensus and to gain practical insights of how well theory and experiment agree.

Representative publication:

• A. Reina, T. Bose, V. Trianni, J.A.R. Marshall, Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS). Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, Vol. 6., pp. 461-473. Springer, Cham.
• T. Bose, A. Reina, J.A.R. Marshall, Collective Decision Making, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 16, 30-34 (2017)