| On 2022-05-24 at 15:00:00 (Brussels Time) |
Abstract
Most of our experiences and also our intuition is usually built on a linear understanding of systems and processes. Complex systems in general and more specifically swarm robotics in this context leverage non-linear effects to self-organise and to ensure that 'more is different'. In previous work the non-linear and therefore counter-intuitive 'less is more' effect was shown for a nest site selection swarm scenario, that is swarms were only able to adapt to changes when the communication range was small. In our recent work, we reproduced this effect in a collective perception scenario. We utilised the Kilogrid, a smart environment designed to enhance the capabilities of the Kilobot robots. Running our experiments, we also encountered a new effect: the 'slower is faster' effect by which the robot swarm was faster when the individual robots sampled their environment less frequently. In our study, we also considered the problem of symmetry breaking, that is, the swarm must decide between alternative options with equal qualities. We observed that the robot swarm can only break the symmetry using a large communication range, and therefore it loses the ability to adapt to changes due to the less is more effect. We propose a new algorithm that allows the robots to dynamically change their communication range and enables the swarm to both adapt to changes and break symmetric decisions.
Link to Seminar:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aYDVRTvS5v-FcnsTJisONwlDTQrEw-hclXJrmwzVxbkg1%40thread.tacv2/1652428414338?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2230a5145e-75bd-4212-bb02-8ff9c0ea4ae9%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22dcfe88e1-1c78-4028-8f17-6357145735b2%22%7d
