Heuristics: intelligent search strategies for computer problem solving
Heuristics: intelligent search strategies for computer problem solving
Graphs & digraphs (2nd ed.)
Artificial Intelligence
Do the right thing: studies in limited rationality
Do the right thing: studies in limited rationality
Learning to act using real-time dynamic programming
Artificial Intelligence - Special volume on computational research on interaction and agency, part 1
Real-time search for learning autonomous agents
Real-time search for learning autonomous agents
Simulated and situated models of chemical trail following in ants
Proceedings of the fifth international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior on From animals to animats 5
Value-update rules for real-time search
AAAI '99/IAAI '99 Proceedings of the sixteenth national conference on Artificial intelligence and the eleventh Innovative applications of artificial intelligence conference innovative applications of artificial intelligence
Introduction to Reinforcement Learning
Introduction to Reinforcement Learning
Efficiently searching a graph by a smell-oriented vertex process
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
Efficient Exploration In Reinforcement Learning
Efficient Exploration In Reinforcement Learning
Problem-Solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence
Problem-Solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence
Reinforcement learning: a survey
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research
Real-time search in non-deterministic domains
IJCAI'95 Proceedings of the 14th international joint conference on Artificial intelligence - Volume 2
A robust and fast action selection mechanism for planning
AAAI'97/IAAI'97 Proceedings of the fourteenth national conference on artificial intelligence and ninth conference on Innovative applications of artificial intelligence
Easy and hard testbeds for real-time search algorithms
AAAI'96 Proceedings of the thirteenth national conference on Artificial intelligence - Volume 1
Terrain coverage with ant robots: a simulation study
Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents
Vertex-Ant-Walk – A robust method for efficient exploration of faulty graphs
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
Towards Building Terrain-Covering Ant Robots
ANTS '02 Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Ant Algorithms
Collaborative Exploration of Unknown Environments with Teams of Mobile Robots
Revised Papers from the International Seminar on Advances in Plan-Based Control of Robotic Agents,
Building Terrain-Covering Ant Robots: A Feasibility Study
Autonomous Robots
A biological programming model for self-healing
Proceedings of the 2003 ACM workshop on Survivable and self-regenerative systems: in association with 10th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Cooperative Cleaners: A Study in Ant Robotics
International Journal of Robotics Research
Robust and Efficient Covering of Unknown Continuous Domains with Simple, Ant-Like A(ge)nts
International Journal of Robotics Research
Biologically Inspired Self Selective Routing with Preferred Path Selection
Bio-Inspired Computing and Communication
Efficient exploration of unknown indoor environments using a team of mobile robots
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
Efficient Boustrophedon Multi-Robot Coverage: an algorithmic approach
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
Multiple UAV exploration of an unknown region
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
Steps toward self-aware networks
Communications of the ACM - Barbara Liskov: ACM's A.M. Turing Award Winner
Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: volume 2 - Volume 2
Influence of different execution models on patrolling ant behaviors: from agents to robots
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: volume 3 - Volume 3
The complexity of grid coverage by swarm robotics
ANTS'10 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Swarm intelligence
Weighted voting game based multi-robot team formation for distributed area coverage
Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Practical Cognitive Agents and Robots
Static and expanding grid coverage with ant robots: Complexity results
Theoretical Computer Science
Multi-agent coalition formation for distributed area coverage
CARE@AI'09/CARE@IAT'10 Proceedings of the CARE@AI 2009 and CARE@IAT 2010 international conference on Collaborative agents - research and development
Review: Of robot ants and elephants: A computational comparison
Theoretical Computer Science
Multi-robot exploration and terrain coverage in an unknown environment
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research
Effects of Multi-Robot Team Formations on Distributed Area Coverage
International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research
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Ant robots are simple creatures with limited sensing and computational capabilities. They have the advantage that they are easy to program and cheap to build. This makes it feasible to deploy groups of ant robots and take advantage of the resulting fault tolerance and parallelism. We study, both theoretically and in simulation, the behavior of ant robots for one-time or repeated coverage of terrain, as required for lawn mowing, mine sweeping, and surveillance. Ant robots cannot use conventional planning methods due to their limited sensing and computational capabilities. To overcome these limitations, we study navigation methods that are based on real-time (heuristic) search and leave markings in the terrain, similar to what real ants do. These markings can be sensed by all ant robots and allow them to cover terrain even if they do not communicate with each other except via the markings, do not have any kind of memory, do not know the terrain, cannot maintain maps of the terrain, nor plan complete paths. The ant robots do not even need to be localized, which completely eliminates solving difficult and time-consuming localization problems. We study two simple real-time search methods that differ only in how the markings are updated. We show experimentally that both real-time search methods robustly cover terrain even if the ant robots are moved without realizing this (say, by people running into them), some ant robots fail, and some markings get destroyed. Both real-time search methods are algorithmically similar, and our experimental results indicate that their cover time is similar in some terrains. Our analysis is therefore surprising. We show that the cover time of ant robots that use one of the real-time search methods is guaranteed to be polynomial in the number of locations, whereas the cover time of ant robots that use the other real-time search method can be exponential in (the square root of) the number of locations even in simple terrains that correspond to (planar) undirected trees.