Summary
This paper describes ongoing work toward a principled controller synthesis methodology for large-scale, minimalist multi-robot systems. The work’s key objectives is to establish a set of programming primitives (processes) for which macroscopic behavior can be formally predicted. Such prediction is made possible by statistical physics techniques that use properties of time-invariant processes while exploiting the system’s large size. This paper’s focus is on the use of numerical and simulation methods during construction of the primitive process set. A computational method, developed by physicists, is used as a high-level simulation to characterize individual process behavior. The output, when interpreted qualitatively, guides distributed system design. In order to validate the approach, we consider a sequential inspection domain with a swarm of 400+ simulated robots. Synchronization is achieved through processes analyzed with the methods described, and predictions are compared with behavior exhibited in a traditional multi-robot simulation. The two simulation tools play different roles in characterizing collective behavior; the differences shed new light on the problem of multi-robot controller synthesis.
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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Tokyo
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Shell, D.A., Matarić, M.J. (2006). Principled Synthesis for Large-Scale Systems: Task Sequencing. In: Gini, M., Voyles, R. (eds) Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 7. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/4-431-35881-1_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/4-431-35881-1_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo
Print ISBN: 978-4-431-35878-7
Online ISBN: 978-4-431-35881-7
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