Group decision by house-hunting agents in multi-robot systems

Abstract

House hunting is an extremely interesting problem in swarm robotic systems which include swarms of autonomous robots (agents) that are able to communicate with each other either directly or indirectly (via the environment) in a limited range. This paper describes a model, based on the behavior of honeybees, for finding a new home when the old one gets destroyed. The particular problem is an example of a complex system and has many applications in robotics and is therefore an interesting problem to both biologists and engineers. In this paper, a number of experiments were carried out to understand how microscopic rules in swarms of agents lead to a macroscopic behavior in the swarm. Experimental results show how different factors including the quorum size and the distance to the best hive affect the decision making process for finding a suitable home when a number of homes of different qualities are available in the environment. Experimental results are found to be consistent with the biological counterparts.