To flock or not to flock

Subscribe (Full Service)


	Search: The ACM Digital Library The Guide

	Feedback

To flock or not to flock: the pros and cons of flocking in long-range "migration" of mobile robot swarms

Full text

Pdf (629 KB)

Source

International Conference on Autonomous Agents archive
Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1 table of contents

Budapest, Hungary

SESSION: Multi-robotics table of contents

Pages 65-72

Year of Publication: 2009

ISBN:978-0-9817381-6-1

Authors

Fatih Gökçe	Middle East Technical Univ., Ankara, Turkey
Erol Şahin	Middle East Technical Univ., Ankara, Turkey

Sponsors

: The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents
Microsoft Research : Microsoft Research
: Wiley - Blackwell Ltd
: Whitestein Technologies
: European Office of Aerospace Research and Development, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, United States Air Force Research Laboratory
: Drexel University

Publisher

International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems Richland, SC

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): 14, Downloads (12 Months): 38, Citation Count: 0

Additional Information:

abstract references index terms collaborative colleagues

Tools and Actions:	Review this Article Save this Article to a Binder Display Formats: BibTeX EndNote ACM Ref

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the pros and cons of flocking in long-range "migration" of mobile robot swarms under the influence of different factors. We present a flocking behavior consisting of three simple behaviors: heading alignment, proximal control, and alignment to the desired homing direction. The behavior drives a flock of robots from one location to another by sensing the magnetic field of the Earth. We propose that four factors influence the accuracy of reaching a particular location with the proposed behavior; namely, averaging through the heading alignment behavior, the noise in sensing the homing direction, the differences in the characteristics of the individuals, and the disturbances caused by proximal control behavior. In a series of systematic experiments conducted with both physical and simulated robots, we evaluate the effects of these factors in the accuracy of long-range "migrations" of flocks.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	R. C. Beason. Mechanisms of magnetic orientation in birds. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 45(3):565--573, June 2005.
	2	S. Benvenuti and N. Baldaccini. Pigeon orientation: A comparison between single birds and small flocks. Ornis Scandinavica, 16:45--48, 1985.
	3	G. Bergman and K. Donner. An analysis of the spring migration of the common scoter and the long-tailed duck in southern Finland. Acta Zool. Fenn., 105:1--59, 1964.
	4	E. Codling, J. Pitchford, and S. Simpson. Group navigation and the "many-wrongs principle" in models of animal movement. Ecology, 88(7):1864--1870, 2007.
	5	G. Grégoire, H. Chaté, and Y. Tu. Moving and staying together without a leader. Physica D, (181):157--170, 2003.
	6	T. Guilford and J. Chappell. When pigeons home alone: Does flocking have a navigational function? Biological Sciences, 263(1367):153--156, 1996.
	7	Álvaro Gutiérrez , Alexandre Campo , Francisco C. Santos , Carlo Pinciroli , Marco Dorigo, Social Odometry in Populations of Autonomous Robots, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence, September 22-24, 2008, Brussels, Belgium [doi>10.1007/978-3-540-87527-7_39]
	8	W. Hamilton. Social aspects of bird orientation mechanisms. Animal Orientation and Navigation, pages 57--71, 1967.
	9	A. Hayes and P. Dormiani-Tabatabaei. Self-organized flocking with agent failure: Off-line optimization and demonstration with real robots. In Proc. of the ICRA'02, pages 3900--3905, 2002.
	10	W. Keeton. Comparative orientational and homing performances of single pigeons and small flocks. Auk, 87:797--799, 1970.
	11	I. Kelly and D. Keating. Flocking by the fusion of sonar and active infrared sensors on physical autonomous robots. In Proceedings of The Third Int. Conf. on Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice, volume 1, page 14, 1996.
	12	S. M. Perez, O. R. Taylor, and R. Jander. A sun compass in monarch butterflies. Nature, 387(6628):29, 1997.
	13	J. Rabøl and H. Noer. Spring migration in the skylark (Alauda arvensis) in Denmark. Influence of environmental factors on the flocksize and migratory direction. Vogelwarte, 27:50--65, 1973.
	14	S. A. Rommel, Jr., and J. D. Mccleave. Prediction of oceanic electric fields in relation to fish migration. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 35(1):27--31, 1973.
	15	G. Simon, P. Volgyesi, M. Maroti, and A. Ledeczi. Simulation-based optimization of communication protocols for large-scale wireless sensor networks. In Proc. of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, volume 3, pages 1339--1346, Big Sky, MT, March 2003.
	16	A. M. Simons. Many wrongs: The advantage of group navigation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 19(9):453--455, 2004.
	17	S. Tamm. Bird orientation: Single homing piegons compared with small flocks. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 7:319--322, 1980.
	18	A. E. Turgut, H. Çelikkanat, F. Gökçe, and E. Şahin. Self-organized flocking in mobile robot swarms. Swarm Intelligence, 2(2--3), 2008.
	19	Ali E. Turgut , Hande Çelikkanat , Fatih Gökçe , Erol Şahin, Self-organized flocking with a mobile robot swarm, Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, May 12-16, 2008, Estoril, Portugal
	20	H. G. Wallraff. Social interrelations involved in migratory orientation of birds: Possible contribution of field studies. Oikos, 30:401--404, 1978.
	21	H. G. Wallraff. Avian Navigation: Pigeon Homing as a Paradigm. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005.