Biomimetic Algorithms for Coordinated Motion: Theory and Implementation
This work addresses the challenge of achieving efficient coordinated motion in multi-agent robotic systems, which is incremental as it builds on existing theoretical studies to apply biological inspiration in practical implementations.
The paper tackled the problem of designing coordinated motion strategies for multi-agent robots by drawing inspiration from biological behaviors like dragonfly territorial battles and starling flocking, implementing two strategies—a steering control law for area coverage and topological velocity alignment for direction alignment—in a laboratory test-bed with wheeled robots and a Vicon motion capture system, demonstrating their applicability in robotic collectives.
Drawing inspiration from flight behavior in biological settings (e.g. territorial battles in dragonflies, and flocking in starlings), this paper demonstrates two strategies for coverage and flocking. Using earlier theoretical studies on mutual motion camouflage, an appropriate steering control law for area coverage has been implemented in a laboratory test-bed equipped with wheeled mobile robots and a Vicon high speed motion capture system. The same test-bed is also used to demonstrate another strategy (based on local information), termed topological velocity alignment, which serves to make agents move in the same direction. The present work illustrates the applicability of biological inspiration in the design of multi-agent robotic collectives.