Controlling Emergent Behavior in Large Scale Mobile Robotic Swarms

摘要

Large swarms of robots present many interesting opportunities such as cooperative task completion while dramatically increasing reliability, robustness, and cost effectiveness. However, scalability problems with communication and control can lead to undesired or uncontrolled emergent swarming behavior. In this paper we consider methods and algorithms for controlling emergent behavior in large scale mobile robotic swarm environments by issuing artificial potential gradients to the swarm en masse via distributed networking protocols. We establish control methods capable of providing a single operator the tools to control the emergent behavior of a virtually unlimited number of mobile robotic agents.