Evolution of Task Partitioning in Swarm Robotics

Abstract

Abstract Task-partitioning refers to the process whereby a task is divided into two or more sub-tasks. Through task par-titioning both efficiency and effectiveness can be improved provided the right environmental conditions. We synthesize self-organized task partitioning behaviors for a swarm of mobile robots using artificial evolution. Through validation experiments, we show that the synthe-sized behaviors exploits behavioral specialization despite being based on homogeneous individual behaviors. Introduction Social insects exhibit astonishing levels of social organization (Wilson, 1971). One of the organiza-tional paradigms used by social insects is division of labour, whereby they perform complex tasks by having parts of the colonies specializing into sub-tasks (Wilson, 1971). Two