INTERFERENCE REDUCTION THROUGH TASK PARTITIONING IN A ROBOTIC SWARM - Or: "Don't you Step on My Blue Suede Shoes!"

Abstract

Swarm robotics, foraging, self-organized task allocation, task partitioning, swarm intelligence. This article studies the use of task partitioning as a way to reduce interference in a spatially constrained harvesting task. Interference is one of the key problems in large cooperating groups. We present a simple method to allocate individuals of a robotic swarm to a partitioned task, and show that task partitioning can increase system performance by reducing sources of interference. The method is experimentally studied, both in an environment with a narrow area and an environment without this constraint. The results are analyzed and compared to the case in which task partitioning is not employed. 1