Swarm Robots Inspired by Friendship Formation Process

TL;DR

This paper explores a swarm robotic system inspired by human friendship formation, demonstrating that simple interaction rules can produce complex patterns, with real-world experiments validating simulation results.

Contribution

The study adapts a friendship formation model to swarm robotics and confirms its effectiveness through real-world robot experiments.

Findings

Simulation successfully predicted pattern formation

Real robots replicated simulated behaviors

Model shows potential for scalable swarm control

Abstract

Swarm robotic systems are systems in which multiple robots having simple functionality perform tasks through their cooperation, and are advantageous in that they can exhibit non-trivial macroscopic functions such as adaptability, fault tolerance, and scalability. We previously proposed a simple model of swarm formation inspired by friendship formation process in human society, and demonstrated via simulation that various non-trivial patterns emerge. In this study, we examine the applicability of the proposed model to a swarm robotic system. As a first step, we developed five robots and demonstrated via real-world experiments that the simulation results can be largely reproduced.