Pheromone communication in a robot swarm: necrophoric bee behaviour and its replication

This paper describes a project to implement necrophoric bee behaviour in a robot swarm. Pheromone communication is an effective means of coordinating the activities of insect colonies including food gathering, alarm and defense, reproduction and recognition of conspecifics. In a similar manner it is anticipated that pheromones will provide a valuable form of communication between robots. In order to investigate the problems and potential for this form of interaction, it was decided to implement an example of pheromone communication in a physical robotic system. Inspiration for this project came from the necrophoric behaviour of bees. The necrophoric pheromone released by dead bees triggers corpse removal behaviour in passing worker bees. In the context of a robot swarm one of the proposed applications for this behaviour is to locate and rescue disabled robots that release a pheromone as a form of distress signal. This paper provides details of the swarm robots used in the project, their sensors and the simple reactive control algorithm that was developed to mimic the necrophoric behaviour of bees. Results of practical experiments and simulations are also given.

[1]  Wittko Francke.  Book Review: Chemical Communication. The Language of Pheromones. (Scientific American Library Series, Vol. 41.) By W. C. Agosta , 1994 .

[2]  Ryohei Kanzaki,et al.  Synthesis of the pheromone-oriented behaviour of silkworm moths by a mobile robot with moth antennae as pheromone sensors1This paper was presented at the Fifth World Congress on Biosensors, Berlin, Germany, 3–5 June 1998.1 , 1999 .

[3]  H. Ishida,et al.  Plume-Tracking Robots: A New Application of Chemical Sensors , 2001, The Biological Bulletin.

[4]  P. Kirk Visscher,et al.  The honey bee way of death: Necrophoric behaviour in Apis mellifera colonies , 1983, Animal Behaviour.

[5]  Chris Melhuish,et al.  Some adaptive movements of animats with single symmetrical sensors , 1996 .

[6]  J. Watson,et al.  The tin oxide gas sensor and its applications , 1984 .

[7]  R. Andrew Russell,et al.  Robotic location of underground chemical sources , 2004, Robotica.

[8]  R. Snodgrass,et al.  Anatomy of the Honey Bee , 1956 .

[9]  Jiming Liu,et al.  Multiagent Robotic Systems , 2001 .

[10]  David W. Payton,et al.  Pheromone Robotics , 2001, Auton. Robots.

[11]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Swarm intelligence: from natural to artificial systems , 1999 .

[12]  Ruth Aylett,et al.  Robots: Bringing Intelligent Machines to Life , 2002 .

[13]  R. A. Russell,et al.  An odour sensing robot draws inspiration from the insect world , 1998, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Bioelectromagnetism (Cat. No.98TH8269).

[14]  D. B. Dusenbery.  Sensory Ecology: How Organisms Acquire and Respond to Information , 1992 .

[15]  L. Goodman,et al.  The Behaviour and physiology of bees , 1991 .

[16]  M. Lindauer.  The social behavior of the bees: a comparative study , 1976, Insectes Sociaux.

[17]  Jiming Liu,et al.  Multi-agent robotic systems , 2001 .

[18]  J. Adler,et al.  The sensing of chemicals by bacteria. , 1976, Scientific American.

[19]  R. Andrew Russell,et al.  Odour Detection by Mobile Robots , 1999, World Scientific Series in Robotics and Intelligent Systems.

[20]  J. S. Kennedy.  Chemical Ecology of Insects, W.J. Bell, R.T. Cardé (Eds.). Chapman & Hall, London (1984), xiv , 1984 .

[21]  N. I. Durlach,et al.  Chemical Releaser of Necrophoric Behavior in Ants , 1958 .

[22]  R. Andrew Russell,et al.  A comparison of reactive robot chemotaxis algorithms , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[23]  T. Wyatt.  Pheromones and Animal Behaviour: Communication by Smell and Taste , 2003 .

[24]  A. Ohuchi,et al.  Evolutionary emergence of collective intelligence with artificial pheromone communication , 2000, 2000 26th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. IECON 2000. 2000 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Electronics, Control and Instrumentation. 21st Century Technologies.

[25]  M. Winston,et al.  Pheromone Communication in Social Insects , 1997 .

[26]  David V. Thiel,et al.  A robotic system to locate hazardous chemical leaks , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[27]  Tristram D. Wyatt.  Pheromones and Animal Behaviour: Pheromones and Animal Behaviour , 2003 .

[28]  Paolo Dario,et al.  Self Organizing Behavior And Swarm Intelligence In A Pack Of Mobile Miniature Robots In Search Of Pollutants , 1992, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[29]  Rodney M. Goodman,et al.  Distributed odor source localization , 2002 .

[30]  Giulio Sandini,et al.  Gradient driven self-organizing systems , 1993, Proceedings of 1993 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS '93).

[31]  Andreas Zell,et al.  Sensing odour sources in indoor environments without a constant airflow by a mobile robot , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[32]  J. Murlis,et al.  Fine‐scale structure of odour plumes in relation to insect orientation to distant pheromone and other attractant sources , 1981 .

[33]  J Atema,et al.  Eddy Chemotaxis and Odor Landscapes: Exploration of Nature With Animal Sensors. , 1996, The Biological bulletin.

[34]  Ron Goodman,et al.  An Autonomous Water Vapor Plume Tracking Robot Using Passive Resistive Polymer Sensors , 2000, Auton. Robots.

[35]  K. Frisch.  The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey Bee , 1961 .

[36]  Charles D. Michener,et al.  Bee Societies. (Book Reviews: The Social Behavior of the Bees. A Comparative Study) , 1974 .

[37]  G. A. Kerkut,et al.  Comprehensive insect physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology , 1985 .