<title>Pheromone robotics</title>

Abstract

We describe techniques for coordinating the actions of large numbers of small-scale robots to achieve useful large-scale results in surveillance, reconnaissance, hazard detection, and path finding. Inspired by the chemical markers used by insects for communication and coordination, we exploit the notion of a “virtual pheromone,” implemented using simple beacons and directional sensors mounted on each robot. Virtual pheromones facilitate simple communication and coordination and require little on-board processing. Our virtual pheromone technique enables a robot collective to become a distributed computing mesh embedded within the environment, while simultaneously acting as a physical embodiment of the user interface. This leads to notions of world embedded computation and world embedded interfaces that provide new ways to think about robot colonies.