Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Herd guidance by multiple sheepdog agents with repulsive force

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Artificial Life and Robotics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper proposes a scalable method of guiding sheep herding with efficiency and robustness by single or multiple sheepdogs. Recently, much attention has been paid to control methods modeled on a sheep herd by a very small number of sheepdog agents. Usually, these control systems are connected to the Internet in some way, and the system must be capable of dealing with requirements such as robot failure or hacking by malicious entities. However, except for a few studies, multiple sheepdog agents to work together efficiently have been rarely discussed. The main problem is the way to produce an efficient geographical role assignment to multiple sheepdogs. Experimental results show that the introducing repulsion gain \(K_{f4}\) between a couple of two sheepdogs can emerge circle formation, while the group of sheepdogs guides a flock of sheep to goal. Therefore, it can achieve the task more quickly and reliably than the conventional method of a single sheepdog by increasing the number of units. This paper is based on the paper presented at the proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics (Tashiro et al., The 4th International Symposium on 528 Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics: 397–408, 2021).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Tashiro M, Kubo M, Sato H (2021) Herd guidance by multiple sheepdogs.Swarm2021:The 4th International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics: 397–408

  2. Strömbom D, Mann RP, Wilson AM, Hailes S, Morton AJ, Sumpter DJ, King AJ (2014) Solving the shepherding problem: heuristics for herding autonomous, interacting agents. J R Soc Interface. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.0719

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Long NK, Sammut K, Sgarioto D, Garratt M, Abbass HA (2020) A Comprehensive Review of Shepherding as a Bio-Inspired Swarm-Robotics Guidance Approach. IEEE Trans Emerg Topics Comput Intell 4(4):523–537. https://doi.org/10.1109/TETCI.2020.2992778

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Sueoka Y, Tsunoda Y (2020) Multi-agent system control motivated by sheepdog system. J Soc Instrument Control Eng 59(2): 125–130. https://doi.org/10.11499/sicejl.59.125. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sicejl/59/2/59_125/ (Online ISSN 1883-8170, Print ISSN 0453-4662)

  5. Lien JM, Rodriguez S, Malric JP, Amato NM (2005) Shepherding behaviors with multiple shepherds. In: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation: 3402–3407

  6. Harrison JF, Vo C, Lien JM (2010) Scalable and robust shepherding via deformable shapes,MIG’10: Proceedings of the Third international conference on Motion in games,November 2010: 218–229

  7. Özdemir A, Gauci M, Groß R (2018) Shepherding with robots that do not compute. In: ECAL 2017: The Fourteenth European Conference on Artificial Life. European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL 2017, 04–08 Sep 2017, Lyon, France. MIT Press , Cambridge: 332–339 (ISBN 9780262346337)

  8. Sueoka Y, Sugimoto Y, Nakanishi D, Ishikawa M, Osuka K, Ishiguro A (2013) Analysis of implicit control structure in object clustering by distributed autonomous robots. Trans Jpn Soc Mech ENG Series C 79(800):1046–1055

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Vaghan R, Sumpter N, Frost A, Cameron S (1998) Robot sheepdog project achieves automatic flock control Proc. Fifth International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (1998)

  10. Lien JM, Bayazit OB, Sowell RT, Rodriguez S, Amato NM (2004) Shepherding behaviors. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA ’04, 2004 4 : 4159-4164https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2004.1308924

  11. Hayashi S, Fujioka K (2016) A study on the efficient flock management by multi-agent systems. Proc 78th National Convention of IPSJ 2016: 379–380

  12. Fujioka K (2018) Effective herding in shepherding problem in V-formation control. Trans Inst Syst Control Inform Eng 31(1):21–27

    Google Scholar 

  13. Tsunoda Y, Sueoka Y, Sato Y, Osuka K (2018) Analysis of local-camera-based shepherding navigation. Adv Robot 32(23):1217–1228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Jyh-Ming Lien and Emlyn Pratt (2009) Interactive Planning for Shepherd Motion,Conference: Agents that Learn from Human Teachers, Papers from the 2009 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-09-01, Stanford, California, USA, March 23-25,pp95-102

  15. Pierson A, Schwager M (2018) Controlling Noncooperative Herds with Robotic Herders. IEEE Trans Rob 34(2):517–525. https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2017.2776308

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Lee W, Kim D (2017) Autonomous Shepherding Behaviors of Multiple Target Steering Robots. Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) 17(12):2729. https://doi.org/10.3390/s17122729

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Tsunoda Y, Sueoka Y, TeruyoWada T, Osuka K (2019) Theoretical analysis of mobile control method for group agents motivated by sheepdog shepherding. Trans Soc Instrum Control Eng 55(8):507–515

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Reynolds CW (1987) Flocks, herds and schools: a distributed behavioral model. ACM SIGGRAPH Comp Graphics 21(4):25–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, National Defense Academy of Japan, Hashirimizu 1-10-20, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan

    Masao Kubo & Hiroshi Sato

  2. Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, Shinjuku, Japan

    Midori Tashiro

  3. Department of Information and Systems Engineering, Fukuoka Institute of Technology, 3-30-1 Wajiro-higashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan

    Akihiro Yamaguchi

Authors
  1. Masao Kubo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Midori Tashiro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Hiroshi Sato
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Akihiro Yamaguchi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Masao Kubo.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This work was presented in part at the joint symposium with the 15th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 2021 and the 4th International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics 2021 (Online, June1–4, 2021).

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kubo, M., Tashiro, M., Sato, H. et al. Herd guidance by multiple sheepdog agents with repulsive force. Artif Life Robotics 27, 416–427 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-021-00726-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-021-00726-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation