Task differentiation in Polistes wasp colonies: a model for self-organizing groups of robots

In this paper we described a simplified model for a case of functional self-organization. It deals with the emergence of a particular form of task assignment and parallel hierarchical organization within a social group which depend basically on the interactions occuning between individuals and with their immediate local suroundings. The task organization within the colony appeared to be a distributed function which does not require the presence of an individualized cenral organizer. We discussed how such elementary processes could potentially be applied in the coordination and self-organization of groups of interacting robots with simple local computational properties to perform a wide range of tasks.