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Collective Construction with Robot Swarms

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Morphogenetic Engineering

Part of the book series: Understanding Complex Systems ((UCS))

Abstract

Social insects build large, complex structures, which emerge through the collective actions of many simple agents acting with no centralized control or preplanning. These natural systems inspire the research topic of collective construction, in which the goal is to engineer artificial systems that build in a similar way, with swarms of simple robots producing desired structures. In this chapter I review work on the design and realization of such systems. Robots in these systems act independently, in unknown numbers and with no fixed timing, using only local information and no explicit communication; the system takes a high-level design as input, and is guaranteed to produce a structure matching that design, without requiring the details of the construction process to be specified. Stigmergy (indirect communication through manipulation of a shared environment) and convention (tacit agreement due to the use of a common set of rules shared by all robots) are useful principles for implicit coordination that make these collective behaviors possible. I outline current progress in this area and future directions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The seed block can even be identical to all other blocks, so that no such distinct landmark is required, if robots have a compass (details in [43]).

  2. 2.

    One could imagine going even further down this path and making the blocks responsible also for their own movement—that is, erasing the distinction between robots and blocks, and building the structure out of robots directly. This idea will be discussed in Sect. 5.4.

  3. 3.

    Or, since you may very well be reading this chapter on your laptop, possibly outdoors: “...not just the computer displaying this electronic document, but the building to which you will eventually return to plug it in”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Justin Werfel

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  1. Justin Werfel
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Correspondence to Justin Werfel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut des Systèmes Complexes, Paris Ile-de-France, Ecole Polytechnique, rue Lhomond 57-59, Paris, 75005, France

    René Doursat

  2. Binghamton University, Dept. Bioengineering, State University of New York, Binghamton, 13902-6000, New York, USA

    Hiroki Sayama

  3. Faculté des Sciences et Technologie, Lab. LACL-EA 4219, Université Paris-Est Créteil, avenue due Général de Gaulle 61, Créteil Cedex, 94010, France

    Olivier Michel

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Werfel, J. (2012). Collective Construction with Robot Swarms. In: Doursat, R., Sayama, H., Michel, O. (eds) Morphogenetic Engineering. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33902-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33902-8_5

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