Towards Autonomous Task Partitioning in Swarm Robotics
Experiments with Foraging Robots

Supplementary material for Chapter 6- real robot runs data

by Giovanni Pini
April 2013

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This page reports data collected in the experimental runs performed with the real marXbots. We performed a total of 12 experimental runs, in 6 of these runs the robots utilize task partitioning to perform foraging, in the remaining 6 the robots perform foraging without task partitioning.

For each run we report basic statistics:
  • Number of objects collected: number of objects delivered to the nest by the swarm, at the end of the experiment
  • Get lost frequency, objects source: frequency at which neighborhood search failed or the robots attempted to exit the arena. The measure accounts for the cases in which the robots were trying to reach the source (i.e., the odometry estimate is relative to the position of objects source).
  • Get lost frequency, transfer locations: frequency at which neighborhood search failed or the robots attempted to exit the arena. The measure accounts for the cases in which the robots were trying to reach the position in which they received an object (i.e., the odometry estimate is relative to the location where the robot received an object).
  • Number of time robots tried to exit the arena: how many times the mechanism that checks if the robot tries to exit the arena was triggered.
  • Number of object transferred: number of times an object was passed from a robot to another (partition strategy only).
  • Number of time the robots abandon transferring (timeout): how many times robots waiting for transfer their object abandoned (partition strategy only).
  • Abandon transfer rate: rate at which the robots waiting for transferring the object abandoned (partition strategy only).
  • Number of objects lost: number of times an object was dropped on the floor before reaching the nest (object dropped are removed from the experiment).

RUNS WITHOUT TASK PARTITIONING

Run1 (non-partition)

Number of objects collected 15
Get lost frequency, objects source 78.57%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of objects lost 0

Run2 (non-partition)

Number of objects collected 26
Get lost frequency, objects source 80%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of objects lost 1

Run3 (non-partition)

Number of objects collected 19
Get lost frequency, objects source 94.44%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of objects lost 0

Run4 (non-partition)

Number of objects collected 30
Get lost frequency, objects source 72.41%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of objects lost 0

Run5 (non-partition)

Number of objects collected 23
Get lost frequency, objects source 66.67%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of objects lost 0

Run6 (non-partition)

A video with the complete run can be found HERE.
Number of objects collected 26
Get lost frequency, objects source 70.83%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of objects lost 0

RUNS WITH TASK PARTITIONING

Run1 (partition)

Number of objects collected 30
Get lost frequency, objects source 14.28%
Get lost frequency, transfer locations 22.22%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of object transferred 28
Number of time the robots abandon transferring (timeout) 2
Abandon transfer rate 6.67%
Number of objects lost 0

Run2 (partition)

Number of objects collected 33
Get lost frequency, objects source 23.53%
Get lost frequency, transfer locations 11.11%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of object transferred 33
Number of time the robots abandon transferring (timeout) 1
Abandon transfer rate 2.94%
Number of objects lost 2

Run3 (partition)

Number of objects collected 29
Get lost frequency, objects source 12.9%
Get lost frequency, transfer locations 13.79%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 1
Number of object transferred 32
Number of time the robots abandon transferring (timeout) 1
Abandon transfer rate 3.03%
Number of objects lost 3

Run4 (partition)

Number of objects collected 38
Get lost frequency, objects source 5.13%
Get lost frequency, transfer locations 13.89%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of object transferred 37
Number of time the robots abandon transferring (timeout) 1
Abandon transfer rate 2.63%
Number of objects lost 0

Run5 (partition)

Number of objects collected 40
Get lost frequency, objects source 2.33%
Get lost frequency, transfer locations 9.52%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of object transferred 45
Number of time the robots abandon transferring (timeout) 0
Abandon transfer rate 0%
Number of objects lost 4

Run6 (partition)

A video with the complete run can be found HERE.
Number of objects collected 38
Get lost frequency, objects source 10%
Get lost frequency, transfer locations 14.29%
Number of time robots tried to exit the arena 0
Number of object transferred 39
Number of time the robots abandon transferring (timeout) 0
Abandon transfer rate 0%
Number of objects lost 1