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Negative Updating Combined with Opinion Pooling in the Best-of-n Problem in Swarm Robotics

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Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11172))

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Abstract

There is a need for effective collective decision making in decentralised multi-agent and robotic systems. This paper introduces a novel approach to the best-of-n decision problem with large n. It utilises negative feedback obtained from direct pairwise comparison of options and evidence preserving opinion pooling. We present agent-based simulation experiments that explore the effects of pool size and the number of options on the speed of consensus. Robotic simulation experiments are then used to investigate the potential of the approach as a method for solving the best-of-n decision problem in swarm robotic applications. Overall, the results suggest that the proposed approach is highly scalable with regards to n.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially funded by an EPRSC PhD studentship as part of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Autonomous and Robotic Systems (grant number EP/L015293/1). The authors would like to thank Michael Crosscombe for many useful discussions and valuable comments. All underlying data is included in full within the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Bristol, UK

    Chanelle Lee & Alan Winfield

  2. Department of Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Chanelle Lee & Jonathan Lawry

  3. University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

    Chanelle Lee & Alan Winfield

Authors
  1. Chanelle Lee
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  2. Jonathan Lawry
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  3. Alan Winfield
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chanelle Lee .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Marco Dorigo

  2. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Mauro Birattari

  3. Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Bellaterra, Spain

    Christian Blum

  4. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Anders L. Christensen

  5. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Andreagiovanni Reina

  6. National Research Council, Rome, Italy

    Vito Trianni

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Lee, C., Lawry, J., Winfield, A. (2018). Negative Updating Combined with Opinion Pooling in the Best-of-n Problem in Swarm Robotics. In: Dorigo, M., Birattari, M., Blum, C., Christensen, A., Reina, A., Trianni, V. (eds) Swarm Intelligence. ANTS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11172. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00533-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00533-7_8

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