Researchers from the University of Sheffield developed a method to improve communication between individual robots making up a swarm, thus improving their ability to adapt to new environments and work together.
The study, led by Dr. Andreagiovanni Reina, finds that reduced communication among individuals in a group results in the group responding more rapidly to changes in their environment and making more sophisticated decisions.
The researchers produced these findings by studying how a swarm of small robots communicate with each other to reach a consensus on the area in which they should gather in and explore.
The study is based on the voter model – a protocol in robotics where each robot assesses the environment on an individual basis and then broadcasts its opinion to the rest of the swarm, so other robots can select these broadcasts and use them to update their own opinions on the best area.
When using this protocol, researchers found that the robot swarm was slow to react and adapt when their environment changed, and better areas emerged.
However, when each robot had fewer communication links, their ability to adapt quickly to new environments improved. This occurred when the robots could only communicate with others which were within a 10cm range, rather than broadcasting to the whole group.
Dr Andreagiovanni Reina of the University’s Department of Computer science and leader of the study said: “Swarms of robots have huge potential to help us access places that are either too hazardous or simply inaccessible to humans. For example, they could fly over a forest fire that is too vast or dangerous for humans to tackle alone, monitor how the fire spreads and secede where help is needed most”
“This is what our research is helping to do – our findings could be used to develop swarms of robots that are more responsive and able to make the right decisions much quicker than they currently can.”
