Spiking Neural Networks as a Controller for Emergent Swarm Agents

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that spiking neural networks can be evolved to control simple binary-sensing agents to exhibit complex emergent behaviors like milling in swarm robotics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to evolve both the structure and parameters of spiking neural networks for emergent swarm behaviors, advancing autonomous control strategies.

Findings

Spiking neural networks can be evolved to produce milling behavior.

Evolution of network structure improves emergent behavior.

Baseline comparison shows neural networks outperform hand-crafted controllers.

Abstract

Drones which can swarm and loiter in a certain area cost hundreds of dollars, but mosquitos can do the same and are essentially worthless. To control swarms of low-cost robots, researchers may end up spending countless hours brainstorming robot configurations and policies to ``organically" create behaviors which do not need expensive sensors and perception. Existing research explores the possible emergent behaviors in swarms of robots with only a binary sensor and a simple but hand-picked controller structure. Even agents in this highly limited sensing, actuation, and computational capability class can exhibit relatively complex global behaviors such as aggregation, milling, and dispersal, but finding the local interaction rules that enable more collective behaviors remains a significant challenge. This paper investigates the feasibility of training spiking neural networks to find those local interaction rules that result in particular emergent behaviors. In this paper, we focus on simulating a specific milling behavior already known to be producible using very simple binary sensing and acting agents. To do this, we use evolutionary algorithms to evolve not only the parameters (the weights, biases, and delays) of a spiking neural network, but also its structure. To create a baseline, we also show an evolutionary search strategy over the parameters for the incumbent hand-picked binary controller structure. Our simulations show that spiking neural networks can be evolved in binary sensing agents to form a mill.