Self-Organized Behaviour of Distributed Autonomous Mobile Robotic Systems by Pattern Formation Principles

Self-organized behaviour of distributed autonomous mobile robotic systems is achieved by using pattern formation principles for controlling the robotic units. Several autonomous mobile robotic units are randomly distributed on a plane or in a space, and every unit has to be assigned to one and only one target, a point in the plane or space where some task has to be done. The costs of working on the tasks are given in dependence of the robotic units. Furthermore, the distances between the initial coordinates of the robotic units and the coordinates of the targets are converted into costs. The total costs, i.e., the sum of all costs which have to be incurred, have to be minimized. The proposed algorithm is error resistant and allows sudden changes like a breakdown of some robotic units. The self-organizing behaviour of the robotic units works in analogy to the emergence of rolls or hexagonal patterns in the Benard problem of fluid dynamics. Simulations of the time-dependent self-organized behaviour of the distributed autonomous mobile robotic system are shown.

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