Ant & bee inspired foraging swarm robots using computer vision

Abstract

Robotics is revolutionizing a gamut of industries from automobile to manufacturing. Swarm robots are a new approach to manage and co-ordinate multi-robot systems, which deals with emulating collective behavior of biological species in robots. Robotic swarms are able to bring greater mass co-ordination, intelligence to whichever application it is applied. In this paper a method based on the chain formation behavior of ants and division of labor in bees is emulated. Swarm robots are designed to emulate the ants, and form chains while foraging and the division of labor is used for preventing wastage of energy. For localization and navigation a computer vision based algorithm is used which is coupled with magnetometer sensor readings. This approach can be successfully applied to a wide variety of applications such as warehouses, space exploration and military operations.