Intelligent navigation of multiple mobile robotsusing an ant colony optimization techniquein a highly cluttered environment

Abstract

This article presents the cooperative behaviour of a multi-robot system in which each robot has a very simple interaction method. In this article, some effort has been made to develop a theory of ant colony optimization for the navigation of multiple mobile robots. Ant colony optimization is a model for bio-simulation due to relative individual simplicity and complex group behaviours. Each ant drops a quantity of artificial pheromone at every point that the ant passes through. This pheromone simply changes the probability that the next ant becomes attracted to a particular grid point. As each ant will make a decision at every grid point that it encounters, it is possible that an ant may wander around the grid map or may become stuck among local grid points. In order to prevent this phenomenon, the proposed solution adapted a global attraction term that guides ants to head towards the destination point. The theory has been tested in both simulation and experimental modes.