Controlling Swarms: A Programming Paradigm with Minimalistic Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces WOSPP, a minimalistic swarm control paradigm inspired by biological systems, enabling complex behaviors with just 1-bit communication bandwidth among agents.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel wave-based swarm programming paradigm that requires minimal communication bandwidth, inspired by slime mold and fireflies, for controlling complex swarm behaviors.

Findings

1-bit communication suffices for diverse swarm behaviors

Wave propagation enables autonomous self-organization

Simple signals can produce complex collective behaviors

Abstract

Inspired by natural swarms, numerous control schemes enabling robotic swarms, mobile sensor networks and other multi-agent systems to exhibit various self-organized behaviors have been suggested. In this work, we present a Wave Oriented Swarm Programming Paradigm (WOSPP) enabling the control of swarms with minimalistic communication bandwidth in a simple manner, yet allowing the emergence of diverse complex behaviors and autonomy of the swarm. Communi cation in the proposed paradigm is based on "ping"-signals inspired by strategies for communication and self organization of slime mold (dictyostelium discoideum) and fireflies (lampyridae). Signals propagate as information-waves throughout the swarm. We show that even with 1-bit bandwidth communication between agents suffices for the design of a substantial set of behaviors in the domain of essential behaviors of a collective. Ultimately, the reader will be enabled to develop and design a control scheme for individual swarms.