Abstract
Collective decision-making is a process whereby the members of a group decide on a course of action by consensus. In this paper, we propose a collective decision-making mechanism for robot swarms deployed in scenarios in which robots can choose between two actions that have the same effects but that have different execution times. The proposed mechanism allows a swarm composed of robots with no explicit knowledge about the difference in execution times between the two actions to choose the one with the shorter execution time. We use an opinion formation model that captures important elements of the scenarios in which the proposed mechanism can be used in order to predict the system's behavior. The model predicts that when the two actions have different average execution times, the swarm chooses with high probability the action with the shorter average execution time. We validate the model's predictions through a swarm robotics experiment in which robot teams must choose one of two paths of different length that connect two locations. Thanks to the proposed mechanism, a swarm made of robot teams that do not measure time or distance is able to choose the shorter path.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 305-327 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Swarm Intelligence |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 3-4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
Acknowledgements This work was supported by the European Commission through the ERC Advanced Grant “E-SWARM: Engineering Swarm Intelligence Systems” (contract 246939). The information provided is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not reflect the European Commission’s opinion. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that might be made of data appearing in this publication. Alexander Scheidler is supported by the Postdoc Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Mauro Birattari and Marco Dorigo acknowledge support from the F.R.S.-FNRS of Belgium’s French Community, of which they are a Research Associate and a Research Director, respectively.
Keywords
- Collective decision-making
- Differential latency
- Opinion dynamics
- Self-organization
- Swarm intelligence
- Swarm robotics