A new method for fabricating textile integrable capacitive soft strain sensors is reported, based on multicore-shell fiber printing. The fiber sensors consist of four concentric, alternating layers of conductor and dielectric, respectively. These wearable sensors provide accurate and hysteresis-free strain measurements under both static and dynamic conditions.
The trajectories of Kuhlia mugil fish swimming freely in a tank are analyzed in order to develop a model of spontaneous fish movement. The data show that K. mugil displacement is best described by turning speed and its auto-correlation. The continuous-time process governing this new kind of displacement is modelled by a stochastic differential equation of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck family: the persistent turning walker. The associated diffusive dynamics are compared to the standard persistent random walker model and we show that the resulting diffusion coefficient scales non-linearly with linear swimming speed. In order to illustrate how interactions with other fish or the environment can be added to this spontaneous movement model we quantify the effect of tank walls on the turning speed and adequately reproduce the characteristics of the observed fish trajectories.
A Novel Concept for the Study of Heterogeneous Robotic Swarms warm robotics systems are characterized by decentralized control, limited communication between robots, use of local information, and emergence of global behavior. Such systems have shown their potential for flexibility and robustness [1]-[3]. However, existing swarm robotics systems are by and large still limited to displaying simple proof-of-concept behaviors under laboratory conditions. It is our contention that one of the factors holding back swarm robotics research is the almost universal insistence on homogeneous system components. We believe that swarm robotics designers must embrace heterogeneity if they ever want swarm robotics systems to approach the complexity required of real-world systems. To date, swarm robotics systems have almost exclusively comprised physically and behaviorally undifferentiated agents. This design decision has its roots in ethological models of self-organizing natural systems. These models serve as inspiration for swarm robotics system designers, but are often highly abstract simplifications of natural systems and, to date, have largely assumed homogeneous agents. Selected dynamics of the systems under study are shown to emerge from the interactions of identical system components, ignoring the heterogeneities (physical, spatial, functional, and informational) that one can find in almost any natural system. The field of swarm robotics currently lacks methods and tools with which to study and leverage the heterogeneity that is present in natural systems. To remedy this deficiency, we propose swarmanoid, an innovative swarm robotics system composed of three different robot types with complementary skills: foot-bots are small autonomous robots specialized in moving on both even and uneven terrains, capable of self-assembling and of transporting objects or other robots; hand-bots are autonomous robots capable of climbing some vertical surfaces and manipulating small objects; and eye-bots are autonomous flying robots that can attach to an indoor ceiling, capable of analyzing the environment from a privileged position to S
Nest building in social insects is among the collective processes that show highly conservative features such as basic modules (chambers and galleries) or homeostatic properties. Although ant nests share common characteristics, they exhibit a high structural variability, of which morphogenesis and underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. We conducted two-dimensional nestdigging experiments under homogeneous laboratory conditions to investigate the shape diversity that emerges only from digging dynamics and without the influence of any environmental heterogeneity. These experiments revealed that, during the excavation, a morphological transition occurs because the primary circular cavity evolves into a ramified structure through a branching process. Such a transition is observed, whatever the number of ants involved, but occurs more frequently for a larger number of workers. A stochastic model highlights the central role of density effects in shape transition. These results indicate that nest digging shares similar properties with various physical, chemical, and biological systems. Moreover, our model of morphogenesis provides an explanatory framework for shape transitions in decentralized growing structures in group-living animals.self-organization | nest building | branching pattern | modeling | collective behavior T he building of structures by animals is a widely spread phenomenon, from protozoa to primates (1). These structures can be considered an extension of the animal body: They have an adaptive value by improving the regulation of energetic exchanges with the outer environment (2), by ensuring the management of waste compounds (3), and by allowing food storage or protection against predation, but also by shaping the spatial distribution of social interactions (4). The nests of social insects take over all of these functions and show a robust relationship between nest volume and colony size (5-9). In ants, every nest is made of the same basic building modules (9-11) (i.e. chambers, tunnels), the sameness of which contrasts with the diversity of nest architecture (number and proportion of different modules, nest topology, and pattern regularity) that varies not only interspecifically but also intraspecifically according to the colony growth process (7, 9).Although a dynamic study of nest building is essential to understand how the diversity of patterns is generated, there are few such studies (5, 6) addressing this issue. Most research describes final nest structures (7, 9, 12) or focuses on particular digging behaviors (13, 14) but provides few insights on the building process as a whole or on the mechanisms that generate a diversity of nest shapes.The prevailing questions, therefore, are: Does the shape diversity find its origin in the complexity of the building behaviors of the insects, a specific behavior being associated to a specific shape or in quantitative changes in digging activity? Does it result from changes in the insect environment due to the building process itself? Or does the nest pa...
In this paper, we propose a swarm intelligence localization strategy in which robots have to locate different resource areas in a bounded arena and forage between them. The robots have no knowledge of the arena dimensions and of the number of resource areas. The strategy is based on peer-to-peer local communication without the need for any central unit. Social Odometry leads to a self-organized path selection. We show how collective decisions lead the robots to choose the closest resource site from a central place. Results are presented with simulated and real robots.
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