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On the robustness of consensus-based behaviors for robot swarms

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Abstract

In swarm robotics, behaviors requiring consensus, meaning having the robots agree on a set of variables, have attracted great attention over the years. Determining the robustness and applicability of these behaviors in harsh communication environments is an open area of research. In this paper, we propose the use of a formal software engineering technique, statistical model checking, to model and assess the robustness of consensus-based behaviors from a communication standpoint. We validate our approach on two common scenarios for a robot swarm: the election of a leader and the allocation of a set of tasks. With the proposed model, we verify the functional correctness of these consensus-based algorithms, as well as assessing their robustness to communication loss and robot failures.

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Notes

  1. http://www.ascens-ist.eu/

  2. http://people.cs.aau.dk/~adavid/smc/

  3. https://www.k-team.com/mobile-robotics-products/khepera-iv/introduction

  4. https://github.com/MISTLab/blabbermouth

  5. http://people.cs.aau.dk/~adavid/smc/cases.html

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Funding

Funded was provided by NSERC Strategic Partnership (Grant 479149-2015).

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  1. MIST Labs, Department of Computer and Software Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, Canada

    Majda Moussa & Giovanni Beltrame

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  1. Majda Moussa
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  2. Giovanni Beltrame
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Correspondence to Majda Moussa.

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Moussa, M., Beltrame, G. On the robustness of consensus-based behaviors for robot swarms. Swarm Intell 14, 205–231 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11721-020-00183-1

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