Composing swarm robot formations based on their distributions using mobile agents

Abstract

This paper presents a control algorithm for composing formations of swarm robots. The composed formations represent specific symbols. The algorithm is based on our mobile software agent based control model where robots acquire any control program as necessary. The robots start working with just generic control programs and they acquire control programs for specific tasks from outside as mobile software agents. Since the mobile software agents can migrate from one robot to another autonomously, they can migrate to the most conveniently located robot for a specific task. This control model eliminates unnecessary movements of physical robots, contributing to suppressing the total costs of any multi-robot systems. Our control algorithm for composing formations takes the advantages of this mobile agent model. We have implemented our algorithm in a simulator and conducted experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.