Collecting a Swarm in a Grid Environment Using Shared, Global Inputs

TL;DR

This paper develops algorithms for efficiently gathering a swarm of micro-scale particles in a grid environment using shared global inputs, addressing challenges in targeted drug delivery and micro-robot control.

Contribution

It introduces novel algorithms for collecting particles in a grid with obstacles using shared global control inputs, suitable for micro-scale applications.

Findings

Algorithms successfully gather particles to a single location.

Comparison shows trade-offs in efficiency and implementation time.

Applicable to micro-robotic drug delivery systems.

Abstract

This paper investigates efficient techniques to collect and concentrate an under-actuated particle swarm despite obstacles. Concentrating a swarm of particles is of critical importance in health-care for targeted drug delivery, where micro-scale particles must be steered to a goal location. Individual particles must be small in order to navigate through micro-vasculature, but decreasing size brings new challenges. Individual particles are too small to contain on-board power or computation and are instead controlled by a global input, such as an applied fluidic flow or electric field. To make progress, this paper considers a swarm of robots initialized in a grid world in which each position is either free-space or obstacle. This paper provides algorithms that collect all the robots to one position and compares these algorithms on the basis of efficiency and implementation time.