Specialization as an optimal strategy under varying external conditions

Authors:
M. Ani Hsieh;Ádám Halász;Ekin Dogus Cubuk;Samuel Schoenholz;Alcherio Martinoli
Affiliations:
Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA;Department of Mathematics, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV;Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA;Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA;Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Laboratory, École Politechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Venue:
ICRA'09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Robotics and Automation
Year:
2009

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Abstract

We present an investigation of specialization when considering the execution of collaborative tasks by a robot swarm. Specifically, we consider the stick-pulling problem first proposed by Martinoli et al. [1], [2] and develop a macroscopic analytical model for the swarm executing a set of tasks that require the collaboration of two robots. We show, for constant external conditions, maximum productivity can be achieved by a single species swarm with carefully chosen operational parameters. While the same applies for a two species swarm, we show how specialization is a strategy best employed for changing external conditions.