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Cooperative Transportation Using Pheromone Agents

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Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8946))

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Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm for cooperatively transporting objects by multiple robots without any initial knowledge. The robots are connected by communication networks, and the controlling algorithm is based on the pheromone communication of social insects such as ants. Unlike traditional pheromone based cooperative transportation, we have implemented the pheromone as mobile software agents that control the mobile robots corresponding to the ants. The pheromone agent has the vector value pointing to its birth location inside, which is used to guide a robot to the birth location. Since the pheromone agent can diffuse with migrations between robots as the same manner as physical pheromone, it can attract other robots scattering in a work field to the birth location. Once the robot finds an object, it briefly pushes the object, measuring the degree of the inclination of the object. The robot generates a pheromone agent with the vector value to pushing point suitable for suppressing the inclination of the object. The process of the pushes and generations of pheromone agents enables the efficient transportation of the object. We have implemented a simulator that follows our algorithm, and conducted experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Sciences, Tokyo University of Science, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda, 278-8510, Japan

    Ryo Takahashi & Munehiro Takimoto

  2. Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Nippon Institute of Technology, 4-1 Gakuendai, Miyashiro-machi, Minamisaitama-gun, 345-8501, Japan

    Yasushi Kambayashi

Authors
  1. Ryo Takahashi
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  2. Munehiro Takimoto
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  3. Yasushi Kambayashi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Munehiro Takimoto .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. LERIA - UFR Sciences, Angers, France

    Béatrice Duval

  2. Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Jaap van den Herik

  3. LERIA - UFR Sciences, Angers, France

    Stephane Loiseau

  4. INSTICC, Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, Setúbal, Portugal

    Joaquim Filipe

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Takahashi, R., Takimoto, M., Kambayashi, Y. (2015). Cooperative Transportation Using Pheromone Agents. In: Duval, B., van den Herik, J., Loiseau, S., Filipe, J. (eds) Agents and Artificial Intelligence. ICAART 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8946. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25210-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25210-0_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25209-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25210-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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