Assessing the effect of self-assembly ports in evolutionary swarm robotics

Abstract

Self-assembly in swarm robotics is essential for a group of robots in achieving a common goal that is not possible to achieve by a single robot. Self-assembly also provides several advantages to swarm robotics. Some of these include versatility, scalability, re-configurability, cost-effectiveness, extended reliability, and capability for emergent phenomena. This work investigates the effect of self-assembly in evolutionary swarm robotics. Because of the lack of research literature within this paradigm, there are few comparisons of the different implementations of self-assembly mechanisms. This paper reports the influence of connection port configuration on evolutionary self-assembling swarm robots. The port configuration consists of the number and the relative positioning of the connection ports on each of the robot. Experimental results suggest that configuration of the connection ports can significantly impact the emergence of selfassembly in evolutionary swarm robotics.