Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T04:55:39.965Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bi-directional pheromone communication between robots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2009

Anies Hannawati Purnamadjaja  and
R. Andrew Russell
Anies Hannawati Purnamadjaja*
Affiliation:
Intelligent Robotics Research Centre, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia.
R. Andrew Russell
Affiliation:
Intelligent Robotics Research Centre, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia.
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: anieshannawati@yahoo.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

This paper describes a project that aims to demonstrate two-way communication between robots using chemical signals. The project is part of a wider investigation examining the potential advantages and drawbacks of implementing pheromone signalling between robots. It is well known that all kinds of biological creatures use chemicals as a means of attracting, repelling, controlling, guiding and informing their fellow creatures. This very wide range of effective biological forms of chemical communication is the inspiration to look at potential robotic applications. In previous work involving the use of physical chemical signals in robotics the case of one robot releasing or depositing a chemical for other robots (or the same robot) to detect and act upon has been addressed. This project moves a step forward to investigate a group of robots where each group member emits and detects pheromone chemicals. The example task addressed in the project is to use chemical signalling to help a collection of robots to assess group size. Bacteria provide a model for this kind of chemical communication. By monitoring chemical concentration bacteria can assess group size and hence modify their behaviour as appropriate. Although not intending to model bacterial quorum sensing in detail this behaviour provides inspiration for our demonstration of bi-directional communication. This paper provides details of the implementation of quorum sensing in a group of robots. The robots used in the project, their control algorithms and experimental results are presented. Both beneficial aspects and the pitfalls of pheromone communication in robotic systems are also discussed.

Keywords

Pheromone communicationGroup sizeRobotics
Type
Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 69 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Kerkut, G. A. and Gilbert, L. I., Comprehensive Insect Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology (Pergamon Press, Oxford, New York, 1985).Google Scholar
2.Agosta, W. C., Chemical Communication (Scientific American Library, New York, 1992).Google Scholar
3.Michener, C. D., The Social Behavior of the Bees: A Comparative Study (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1974).Google Scholar
4.Jacob, E. B., Becker, I., Shapira, Y. and Levine, H., “Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence,” Trends Microbiol. 12 (8), 366–372 (2004).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
5.Dulac, C. and Torello, A. T., “Molecular detection of pheromone signals in mammals: from genes to behaviour,” Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 4, 551–562 (2003).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
6.Karlson, P. and Lüscher, M., “Pheromones: A new term for a class of biologically active substances,” Nature 183, 55–56 (1959).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
7.Karlson, P. and Butenandt, A., “Pheromones (ectohormones) in insects,” Annu. Rev. Entomol. 4 (1), 39–58 (1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.Loutfi, A., Coradeschi, S., Karlsson, L. and Broxvall, M., “Object recognition: A new application for smelling robots,” Rob. Autonom. Syst. 52 (4), 272–289 (2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9.Loutfi, A. and Coradeschi, S., “Smell, think and act: A cognitive robot discriminating odours,” Autonom. Rob. 20 (3), 239–249 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10.Rozas, R., Morales, J. and Vega, D., “Artificial Smell Detection for Robotic Navigation,” Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Advanced Robotics ‘Robots in Unstructured Environments’, IEEE, Pisa, Italia (1991), pp. 1730–1733.Google Scholar
11.Marques, L. and De Almeida, A. T., “Electronic Nose-Based Odour Source Localization,” Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Advanced Motion Control, IEEE, Nagoya, Japan (2000), pp. 36–40.Google Scholar
12.Russell, R. A., Odour Detection by Mobile Robots (World Scientific, River Edge, NJ, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13.Atema, J., “Eddy chemotaxis and odor landscapes: Exploration of nature with animal sensors,” Biol. Bull. 191 (1), 129–138 (1996).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
14.Russell, R. A., “Robotic location of underground chemical sources,” Robotica 22 (1), 109–115 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15.Ishida, H., Nakamoto, T. and Moriizumi, T., “Remote sensing of gas/odor source location and concentration distribution using mobile system,” Sensors Actuators B: Chem. 49 (1–2), 52–57 (1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16.Ishida, H., Tanaka, H., Taniguchi, H. and Moriizumi, T., “Mobile robot navigation using vision and olfaction to search for a gas/odor source,” Autonom. Rob. 20 (3), 231–238 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17.Kazadi, S., Goodman, R., Tsikata, D., Green, D. and Lin, H., “An autonomous water vapor plume tracking robot using passive resistive polymer sensors,” Autonom. Rob. 9 (2), 175–188 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Hayes, A. T., Martinoli, A. and Goodman, R. M., “Distributed odor source localization,” IEEE Sensors J. 2 (3), 260–271 (2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19.Nakamoto, T., Ishida, H., and Moriizumi, T., “An odor compass for localizing an odor source,” Sensors Actuators B: Chem. 35 (1–3), 32–36 (1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20.Pyk, P., Bermudez i Badia, S., Bernardet, U., Knusel, P., Carlsson, M., Gu, J., Chanie, E., Hansson, B., Pearce, T. and Verschure, P. J., “An artificial moth: Chemical source localization using a robot based neuronal model of moth optomotor anemotactic search,” Autonom. Rob. 20 (3), 197–213 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21.Lilienthal, A. and Duckett, T., “Building gas concentration gridmaps with a mobile robot,” Rob. Autonom. Syst. 48 (1), 3–16 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22.Russell, R. A., “Heat Trails as Short-Lived Navigational Markers for Mobile Robots,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 4, IEEE, Albuquerque, NM, USA (1997) pp. 3534–3539.Google Scholar
23.Sugawara, K., Kazama, T. and Watanabe, T., “Foraging Behavior of Interacting Robots with Virtual Pheromone,” Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Sendai, Japan, IEEE, Sendai, Japan (2004), pp. 3074–3079.Google Scholar
24.Kazama, T., Sugawara, K. and Watanabe, T., “Collecting Behavior of Interacting Robots with Virtual Pheromone,” Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic System, Springer, Japan (2004), pp. 331–340.Google Scholar
25.Kazama, T., Sugawara, K. and Watanabe, T., “Traffic-Like Movement on a Trail of Interacting Robots with Virtual Pheromone,” Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Autonomous Minirobots for Research and Edutainment, Springer-Verlag, Fukui, Japan (2005), pp. 383–388.Google Scholar
26.Svennebring, J. and Koenig, S., “Building terrain-covering ant robots: A feasibility study,” Autonom. Rob. 16 (3), 313–332 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27.Payton, D., Daily, M., Estowski, R., Howard, M. and Lee, C., “Pheromone robotics,” Autonom. Rob. 11, 319–324 (2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28.Payton, D., Estkowski, R. and Howard, M., “Compound behaviors in pheromone robotics,” Rob. Autonom. Syst. 44 (3–4), 229–240 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29.Payton, D., Estkowski, R. and Howard, M., “Pheromone robotics and the logic of virtual pheromones,” In: Swarm Robotics, Vol. 3342, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005) pp. 45–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30.Russell, R. A., “Laying and sensing odor markings as a strategy for assisting mobile robot navigation tasks,” IEEE Rob. Automat. Mag. 2 (3), 3–9 (1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31.Purnamadjaja, A. H. and Russell, R. A., “Pheromone communication in a robot swarm: Necrophoric bee behaviour and its replication,” Robotica 23 (6), 731–742 (2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32.Purnamadjaja, A. H. and Russell, R. A., “Congregation Behaviour in a Robot Swarm Using Pheromone Communication,” Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Sydney, Australia (2005).Google Scholar
33.Purnamadjaja, A. H. and Russell, R. A., “Robotic Pheromones: Using Temperature Modulation in Tin Oxide Gas Sensor to Differentiate Swarm's Behaviours,” Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision, Singapore (2006).Google Scholar
34.Fuqua, W. C., Winans, S. C. and Greenberg, E. P., “Quorum sensing in bacteria: The LuxR–LuxI family of cell density-responsive transcriptional regulators,” J. Bacteriol. 176 (2), 269–275 (1994).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
35.Hardman, A. M., Stewart, G. S. A. B. and Williams, P., “Quorum sensing and the cell–cell communication dependent regulation of gene expression in pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria,” Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 74 (4), 199–210 (1998).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
36.Taga, M. E. and Bassler, B. L., “Chemical communication among bacteria,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 14549–14554 (2003).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
37.Bassler, B. L., “Small talk: Cell-to-cell communication in bacteria,” Cell 109 (4), 421–424 (2002).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
38.Holland, O. and Melhuish, C., “An Interactive Method for Controlling Group Size in Multiple Mobile Robot Systems,” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Advanced Robotics, IEEE, Monterey, CA (1997) pp. 201–206.Google Scholar
39.Melhuish, C., Holland, O. and Hoddell, S., “Convoying: Using chorusing to form travelling groups of minimal agents,” Rob. Autonom. Syst. 28 (2–3), 207–216 (1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40.Wyatt, T. D., Pheromones and Animal Behaviour: Communication by Smell and Taste (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
41.Kube, C. R. and Zhang, H., “Collective Robotic Intelligence,” Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, The MIT Press, Honolulu, Hawaii (1992) pp. 460–468.Google Scholar
42.Kube, C. R. and Bonabeau, E., “Cooperative transport by ants and robots,” Rob. Autonom. Syst. 30 (1–2), 85–101 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
43.Stewart, R. L. and Russell, R. A., “A distributed feedback mechanism to regulate wall construction by a robotic swarm,” Adaptive Behav. 14, 21–51 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
44.Wilson, E. O., Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1975).Google Scholar
45.Bradbury, J. W. and Vehrencamp, S. L., Principles of Animal Communication (Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA, 1998).Google Scholar
46.Endler, J. A., “Some general comments on the evolution and design of animal communication systems,” Phil. Trans.: Biol. Sci. 340 (1292), 215–225 (1993).Google ScholarPubMed
47.Pearce, T. C., Schiffman, S. S., Nagle, H. T. and Gardner, J. W., Handbook of Machine Olfaction (Wiley InterScience, Weinheim, Germany, 2003).Google Scholar
48.Martinez, D., Rochel, O. and Hugues, E., “A biomimetic robot for tracking specific odors in turbulent plumes,” Autonom. Rob. 20 (3), 185–195 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
49.Watson, J., “The tin oxide gas sensor and its applications,” Sensors Actuators 5, 29–42 (1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50.Brooks, R., “A robust layered control system for a mobile robot,” IEEE J. Rob. Automat. 2 (1), 14–23 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
51.Brooks, R., “New approaches to robotics,” Science 253 (5025), 1227–1232 (1991).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
52.Settles, G. S., “Sniffers: Fluid-dynamic sampling of olfactory trace detection in nature and homeland security,” J. Fluids Eng. 127, 189–218 (2005) (The 2004 Freeman Scholar Lecture).CrossRefGoogle Scholar