Ganging up: Team-based Aggression Expands the Population/Performance Envelope in a Multi-robot System

— We examine a team of robots with no centralized control performing a transportation task in which robots frequently interfere with each other, thus impairing overall team’s performance. It has previously been shown that stereotyped robot–robot competitions, inspired by aggressive displays in animals, can be used to effectively reduce interference and improve system performance for this task. We describe an extension to the previous best–performing ‘aggression function’ to dynamic teams of robots. Experimental results show that the new method provides the best performance yet seen. Further, we examine the effects of interference–reduction methods over a range of population sizes, and we compare the results to a previously suggested theoretical model.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Yinan Zhang, Richard T. Vaughan
• Keywords: ICRA 2006, Overall Team Performance, Robotics, Robots, Transportation Task