Occlusion-Based Object Transportation Around Obstacles With a Swarm of Miniature Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extension to occlusion-based swarm robotics strategies, enabling decentralized object transportation around obstacles through sub-goal formation, demonstrated via simulation.

Contribution

It presents a novel decentralized method allowing swarm robots to form sub-goals for obstacle navigation without communication, enhancing object transport capabilities.

Findings

Effective in transporting objects around obstacles in simulations

Robust to different starting positions and obstacle shapes

Maintains performance without communication among robots

Abstract

Swarm robotics utilises decentralised self-organising systems to form complex collective behaviours built from the bottom-up using individuals that have limited capabilities. Previous work has shown that simple occlusion-based strategies can be effective in using swarm robotics for the task of transporting objects to a goal position. However, this strategy requires a clear line-of-sight between the object and the goal. In this paper, we extend this strategy by allowing robots to form sub-goals; enabling any member of the swarm to establish a wider range of visibility of the goal, ultimately forming a chain of sub-goals between the object and the goal position. We do so while preserving the fully decentralised and communication-free nature of the original strategy, while maintaining performance in object-free scenarios. In five sets of simulated experiments, we demonstrate the generalisability of our proposed strategy. Our finite-state machine allows a sufficiently large swarm to transport objects around obstacles that block the goal. The method is robust to varying starting positions and can handle both concave and convex shapes.