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International Conference on Swarm Intelligence

ANTS 2020: Swarm Intelligence pp 229–242Cite as

Robot Distancing: Planar Construction with Lanes

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12421))

Abstract

We propose a solution to the problem of spatial interference between robots engaged in a planar construction task. Planar construction entails a swarm of robots pushing objects into a desired two-dimensional configuration. This problem is related to object clustering and sorting as well as collective construction approaches such as wall-building. In previous work we found robots were highly susceptible to collisions among themselves and with the boundary of the environment. Often these collisions led to deadlock and a dramatic reduction in task performance. To address these problems the solution proposed here subdivides the work area into lanes. Each robot determines its own lane and applies a novel control law to stay within it while nudging objects inwards towards the goal region. We show results using a realistic simulation environment. These results indicate that subdividing the arena into lanes can produce mild performance increases while being highly effective at keeping the robots separated. We also show that the introduction of lanes increases robustness to unforeseen obstacles in the environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.pololu.com/docs/0J21.

  2. 2.

    A stadium consists of a rectangular region in the middle with semicircular ends.

  3. 3.

    The innermost and outermost lanes have one adjacent lane, while other lanes have two adjacent lanes.

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Acknowledgments

Funding provided from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) under Discovery Grant RGPIN-2017-06321. Thanks also to the constructive feedback of the ANTS 2020 reviewers who helped to clarify the contents presented here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada

    Andrew Vardy

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  1. Andrew Vardy
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Correspondence to Andrew Vardy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Marco Dorigo

  2. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Thomas Stützle

  3. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Maria J. Blesa

  4. Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Bellaterra, Spain

    Christian Blum

  5. University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

    Heiko Hamann

  6. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Mary Katherine Heinrich

  7. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Volker Strobel

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Vardy, A. (2020). Robot Distancing: Planar Construction with Lanes. In: Dorigo, M., et al. Swarm Intelligence. ANTS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12421. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60376-2_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60376-2_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60375-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60376-2

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