$\Phi$ Clust: Pheromone-Based Aggregation for Robotic Swarms

Farshad Arvin; Ali Emre Turgut; Tomáš Krajník; Salar Rahimi; İlkin Ege Okay; Shigang Yue; Simon Watson; Barry Lennox

IROS 2018poster48 citations

$\Phi$ Clust: Pheromone-Based Aggregation for Robotic Swarms

Farshad Arvin, Ali Emre Turgut, Tomáš Krajník, Salar Rahimi, İlkin Ege Okay, Shigang Yue, Simon Watson, Barry Lennox

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed a pheromone-based aggregation method based on the state-of-the-art BEECLUST algorithm. We investigated the impact of pheromone-based communication on the efficiency of robotic swarms to locate and aggregate at areas with a given cue. In particular, we evaluated the impact of the pheromone evaporation and diffusion on the time required for the swarm to aggregate. In a series of simulated and real-world evaluation trials, we demonstrated that augmenting the BEECLUST method with artificial pheromone resulted in faster aggregation times.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{iros2018_phiclustpheromon,
  title = {$\Phi$ Clust: Pheromone-Based Aggregation for Robotic Swarms},
  author = {Farshad Arvin and Ali Emre Turgut and Tomáš Krajník and Salar Rahimi and İlkin Ege Okay and Shigang Yue and Simon Watson and Barry Lennox},
  booktitle = {IROS 2018},
  year = {2018}
}