Towards a Society of Robots

In this article, we consider how a very large numbers of robots, differing in their bodies, sensing, and intelligence, may be made to coexist, communicate, and compete fairly toward achieving their individual goals, i.e., to build a society of I robots. We discuss some characteristics that the rules defining acceptable social behaviors should possess. We consider threats that may be posed to such a society by the misbehaviors of some of its members, either due to faults or malice, and the possibility to detect and isolate them through cooperation of peers. The article presents examples of motion control protocols, for arbitrarily large groups of heterogeneous robots. We discuss intrusion detection algorithms, which allow detection of deviance from such rules, and algorithms to build a consensus view on the environment and on the integrity of peers, so as to improve the overall security of the society of robots.

[1]  Reza Olfati-Saber,et al.  Flocking for multi-agent dynamic systems: algorithms and theory , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[2]  Huosheng Hu,et al.  Coordination in multi-agent RoboCup teams , 2001, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[3]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Local Monitor Implementation for Decentralized Intrusion Detection in Secure Multi-Agent Systems , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering.

[4]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Consensus-based distributed intrusion detection for multi-robot systems , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  H. Markl,et al.  Recruitment and food-retrieving behavior in Novomessor (Formicidae, Hymenoptera) , 1978, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

[6]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Heterogeneous Wireless Multirobot System , 2008, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

[7]  Kiyotaka Izumi,et al.  Enhancing the Awareness of Decentralized Cooperative Mobile Robots through Active Perceptual Anchoring , 2004 .

[8]  George J. Pappas,et al.  Flocking in Fixed and Switching Networks , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[9]  B. Hölldobler,et al.  Recruitment and food-retrieving behavior in Novomessor (Formicidae, Hymenoptera) , 1978, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

[10]  Claude F. Touzet,et al.  Robot Awareness in Cooperative Mobile Robot Learning , 2000, Auton. Robots.

[11]  Edward O. Wilson,et al.  The multiple recruitment systems of the african weaver ant Oecophylla longinoda (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) , 1978, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

[12]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Robust Network Agreement on Logical Information , 2011 .

[13]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Decentralized classification in societies of autonomous and heterogenous robots , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[14]  John J. Leonard,et al.  A method for protocol‐based collision avoidance between autonomous marine surface craft , 2006, J. Field Robotics.

[15]  Lynne E. Parker,et al.  ALLIANCE: an architecture for fault tolerant multirobot cooperation , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[16]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Distributed Consensus on Boolean Information , 2009 .

[17]  Leslie Lamport,et al.  The Byzantine Generals Problem , 1982, TOPL.

[18]  Tucker R. Balch,et al.  Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[19]  Jun'ichi Takeno,et al.  Coordinating Mobile Robots By Applying Traffic Rules , 1992, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[20]  Tarek F. Abdelzaher,et al.  SenseWorld: Towards Cyber-Physical Social Networks , 2008, 2008 International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (ipsn 2008).

[21]  Xiaoming Hu,et al.  Formation constrained multi-agent control , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[22]  S. Shankar Sastry,et al.  Tracking and Coordination of Multiple Agents Using Sensor Networks: System Design, Algorithms and Experiments , 2007, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[23]  Lynne E. Parker.  The effect of action recognition and robot awareness in cooperative robotic teams , 1995, Proceedings 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human Robot Interaction and Cooperative Robots.

[24]  Reza Olfati-Saber,et al.  Consensus and Cooperation in Networked Multi-Agent Systems , 2007, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[25]  Lynne E. Parker,et al.  Distributed Intelligence: Overview of the Field and Its Application in Multi-Robot Systems , 2008, AAAI Fall Symposium: Regarding the Intelligence in Distributed Intelligent Systems.

[26]  Alan F. T. Winfield,et al.  Safety in numbers: fault-tolerance in robot swarms , 2006, Int. J. Model. Identif. Control..

[27]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Distributed intrusion detection for secure consensus computations , 2007, 2007 46th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[28]  Hajime Asama,et al.  Collision avoidance among multiple mobile robots based on rules and communication , 1991, Proceedings IROS '91:IEEE/RSJ International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems '91.

[29]  Richard M. Murray,et al.  Information flow and cooperative control of vehicle formations , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[30]  Antonio Bicchi,et al.  Decentralized Cooperative Policy for Conflict Resolution in Multivehicle Systems , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[31]  Jorge Cortés,et al.  Distributed algorithms for reaching consensus on general functions , 2008, Autom..