Swarm Robots Inspired by Friendship Formation Process
This work addresses the challenge of implementing theoretical swarm models in practical robotic systems, but it is incremental as it builds on prior simulation work.
The study applied a previously proposed swarm formation model inspired by human friendship formation to a real-world robotic system, demonstrating through experiments with five robots that the simulation results could be largely reproduced.
Swarm robotic systems are systems in which multiple robots having simple functionality perform tasks through their cooperation, and are advantageous in that they can exhibit non-trivial macroscopic functions such as adaptability, fault tolerance, and scalability. We previously proposed a simple model of swarm formation inspired by friendship formation process in human society, and demonstrated via simulation that various non-trivial patterns emerge. In this study, we examine the applicability of the proposed model to a swarm robotic system. As a first step, we developed five robots and demonstrated via real-world experiments that the simulation results can be largely reproduced.