Robot Colony Simulator: A Research Tool For Studying Colonies of Intelligent Robots

This paper describes the design and implementation of an animated computer program for simulating the behavior and task performance of a number of robots in an artificial world. The study of the robot societies requires a simulation environment that facilitates the setup and running of experiments, including a graphical user interface, an animated display of the tests, and the accumulation and report of the results. The structure of the artificial world and the entities which populate it (robots, objects to be gathered, obstacles and predators) are described. The simulator must also enforce the realities (rules) of the world. Dynamic changes in the world resulting from actions of the entities within it are tracked and displayed. The results of a number of experiments are presented, showing the effects of certain environmental features on colony performance, in terms of numbers of objects gathered and energy consumed.

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