Re-embodiment of Honeybee Aggregation Behavior in an Artificial Micro-Robotic System

Abstract

In this article we describe the re-embodiment of biological aggregation behavior of honeybees in Jasmine micro-robots. The observed insect behavior, in the context of the insect's sensor-actor system, is formalized as behavioral and motion-sensing meta-models. These meta-models are transformed into a sensor-actor system of micro-robots by means of a sensors virtualization technique. This allows us to keep the efficiency and scalability of the bio-inspired approach. We also demonstrate the systematic character of this re-embodiment procedure on collective aggregation in a real robotic swarm.

Cooperation of two different swarms controlled by BEECLUST algorithm

“…Recent works (Kengyel et al, 2011;Kernbach et al, 2009) have shown that artificial agents controlled by this algorithm react flexible regarding environmental changes. In the work at hand we investigate how honey bees age polyethism influences this system.…”

Imitation of Honeybee Aggregation with Collective Behavior of Swarm Robots.

“…Based on the evaluated individual behaviors of honeybees, 6,18 those behaviors are fitted in the described criteria of swarm robotics. 3 Inefficiency of a single bee to detect the optimal zone, simple perception of homogeneous individual agents, and effects of the population size are clearly illustrated in honeybee aggregation.…”

“…2 Schools of fish, flocks of birds, colonies of termites and ants, 4 foraging, 5 and aggregation of honeybees 6 are examples of swarm behavior. Ant colony optimization and particle swarm optimization are the most successful applications of swarm in problem solving that have been used in variety of applications.…”

“…The aggregation behavior of honeybees is another inspired example of insects' aggregation which has been implemented by swarm micro robots. 6 According to this aggregation behavior, young honeybees tend to aggregate around a comfortable zone which is an optimal temperature between 34 and 38°C. 18 Details of this algorithm and its implementation will be explained in the following section.…”

Cognitive Systems Platforms using Open Source

“…Collective, networked or swarm robotics are scientific domains, dealing with cooperation in robotics [24]. Current research in these domains is mostly concentrated on cooperation and competition among stand-alone robots to increase their common fitness [25]. However, robots can build a principally new kind of collective systems, when to allow them to aggregate into a multi-robot organismlike-forms.…”