RI: Small: RUI: Fission-Fusion Multi-Robot Systems

Southern Nazarene University, Bethany OK

Investigators

Abstract

The ability to use teams of robots in real-world tasks, such as exploration, reconnaissance and search and rescue, depends on their ability to effectively cooperate in complex and dynamic environments. Unfortunately, determining the most effective team size for a given task depends on a variety of factors, often requires information not readily available, and can be computationally impractical. Observations from nature show that some animal societies exhibit frequent splits (fission) and merges (fusion) of subgroups without the coordination overhead frequently found in multi-robot systems. The goal of this research project is to use these insights from fission-fusion societies in nature as inspiration to implement similar behavior in multi-robot systems. This project will investigate the motivations and mechanisms that contribute to the fission of a team of robots into smaller groups and the fusion of smaller groups into a larger group, into sizes appropriate to a given task. Potential biological and environmental factors that contribute to individual decisions that result in the fission and fusion of groups and that have artificial analogues relevant to multi-robot systems will be identified using agent-based simulations. An emphasis will be placed on factors that contribute to an adaptive task-specific preferred group size. Once identified, these factors will be implemented on physical robots to evaluate the performance of the decision-making system within the constraints of physical robots. The decision-making system used will be implemented using an adaptive fuzzy behavior hierarchy and a collective decision-making model developed using observations of natural systems.