Fast Redistribution of a Swarm of Heterogeneous Robots
Amanda Prorok, M. Ani Hsieh, Vijay Kumar

Citation
Amanda Prorok, M. Ani Hsieh, Vijay Kumar. "Fast Redistribution of a Swarm of Heterogeneous Robots". Proceedings of 9th EAI International Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies, 24, May, 2016.

Abstract
We present a method that distributes a swarm of heterogeneous robots among a set of tasks that require specialized capabilities in order to be completed. We model the system of heterogeneous robots as a community of species, where each species (robot type) is defined by the traits (capabilities) that it owns. Our method is based on a continuous abstraction of the swarm at a macroscopic level, as we model robots switching between tasks. We formulate an optimization problem that produces an optimal set of transition rates for each species, so that the desired trait distribution among the tasks is reached as quickly as possible. Our solution is based on an analytical gradient, and is computationally efficient, even for large choices of traits and species. Finally, we show that our method is capable of producing fast convergence times when compared to state-of-the-art methods.

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Citation formats

• HTML

  Amanda Prorok, M. Ani Hsieh, Vijay Kumar. <a
  href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/681.html"
  >Fast Redistribution of a Swarm of Heterogeneous
  Robots</a>, Proceedings of 9th EAI International
  Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications
  Technologies, 24, May, 2016.

• Plain text

  Amanda Prorok, M. Ani Hsieh, Vijay Kumar. "Fast
  Redistribution of a Swarm of Heterogeneous Robots".
  Proceedings of 9th EAI International Conference on
  Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies,
  24, May, 2016.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{ProrokHsiehKumar16_FastRedistributionOfSwarmOfHeterogeneousRobots,
      author = {Amanda Prorok and M. Ani Hsieh and Vijay Kumar},
      title = {Fast Redistribution of a Swarm of Heterogeneous
                Robots},
      booktitle = {Proceedings of 9th EAI International Conference on
                Bio-inspired Information and Communications
                Technologies},
      day = {24},
      month = {May},
      year = {2016},
      abstract = {We present a method that distributes a swarm of
                heterogeneous robots among a set of tasks that
                require specialized capabilities in order to be
                completed. We model the system of heterogeneous
                robots as a community of species, where each
                species (robot type) is defined by the traits
                (capabilities) that it owns. Our method is based
                on a continuous abstraction of the swarm at a
                macroscopic level, as we model robots switching
                between tasks. We formulate an optimization
                problem that produces an optimal set of transition
                rates for each species, so that the desired trait
                distribution among the tasks is reached as quickly
                as possible. Our solution is based on an
                analytical gradient, and is computationally
                efficient, even for large choices of traits and
                species. Finally, we show that our method is
                capable of producing fast convergence times when
                compared to state-of-the-art methods.},
      URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/681.html}
  }
  

Posted by Amanda Prorok, PhD on 15 Oct 2015.
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