Autonomous division and integration of anonymous agents by using interaction between oscillators

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed a system in which robot swarms autonomously divide or merge themselves according to phase gradients emerged by coupled oscillators. Due to the limitation of communication cost or ability, a large-scale swarm should be controlled in the distributed manner. Although the agents in the proposed system were equipped local communication system only, they successfully organized group formations, and divided or merged them. We employed phase gradients emerged by phase oscillators, which we could find similar phenomena in living slime molds. We implemented a phase oscillator on an agent, and proposed an algorithm to move along the gradients. By controlling phase gradients, we could make the swarms dividing or merging themselves in the self-organization manner. We provided formulations and analyses to guarantee those performances. Simulations and experiments were carried out in order to verify the performance of the proposed system.