Distributed strategy for robots recruitment in swarm-based systems

Abstract

In a scenario wherein several tasks must be done cooperatively by a robotic swarm, it is sometimes mandatory to prescribe the robots that should execute each one of those tasks. A problem related to the division of labour among the swarm members is the robot recruitment. When a specific robot needs assistance, it must create a group, selecting other robots to help in the execution of the given task. The main contribution of this work is the development of a distributed recruitment strategy based mainly on the propagation of messages among neighbouring robots. The algorithm is evaluated through simulations, wherein some recruitment features are analysed by subjecting the swarm to different conditions, such as the total number of robots in the swarm and the number of robots that start the recruitment. This strategy is promising, since robots have no global knowledge about the swarm, relying only in the neighbourhood information.