Dynamically Reconfigurable Robotic Systems - Optimal Knowledge Allocation for Cellular Robotic System (CEBOT) -

Abstract

Cellular robotics (CEBOT) has been previously reported by the authors as one realization of a dynamically reconfigurable robotic system (DRRS). CEBOT is considered a very flexible system and will be applicable to a robotic system which works in various environments. When CEBOT is required to perform tasks, many cells, which can be knowledge sources, communicate with each other and then carry out the tasks automatically. So CEBOT is also a decentralized coordinated reasoning system and a distributed intelligent system. In designing a distributed intelligence system, the distribution of the communication volume among the cells becomes a central issue. For the case of CEBOT, it is best that reasoning can be carried out among each knowledge source with as little communication as possible. Therefore, each cell must have the ability to reallocate their knowledge automatically in order to reduce the amount of communication; this is called intelligent communication in this paper. In this paper, we propose a communication evaluation method based on the amount of communication information, and also describe an optimal knowledge allocation method on CEBOT (as one realization of a distributed coordinated reasoning system) by introducing a sensitivity function for knowledge allocation.