Specialization and generalization of robot behaviour in swarm energy foraging

Abstract

Energy supply is one of the most serious problems for micro-mechatronic devices. For collective systems, such as sensor networks or swarms of autonomous micro-robots, collective energy management is especially hard. This work describes a kinetic model of energy foraging and an application of bio-inspired harvesting behaviour to a real robot swarm. The heuristic strategy derived allows proper collective management of energy resources without using global knowledge and guarantees a good swarm efficiency. Despite the whole swarm having the same behavioural rules, some robots specialize in only a few foraging activities, whereas others are more universal in their behaviour. Such emergence of ‘specialists’ and ‘generalists’ is observed in animal groups and can indicate common behavioural principles underlying natural and artificial systems.