An Overview of Physicomimetics

This paper provides an overview of our framework, called physicomimetics, for the distributed control of swarms of robots. We focus on robotic behaviors that are similar to those shown by solids, liquids, and gases. Solid formations are useful for distributed sensing tasks, while liquids are for obstacle avoidance tasks. Gases are handy for coverage tasks, such as surveillance and sweeping. Theoretical analyses are provided that allow us to reliably control these behaviors. Finally, our implementation on seven robots is summarized. 1 Vision The focus of our research is to design and build rapidly deployable, scalable, adaptive, cost-effective, and robust swarms of autonomous distributed robots. Our objective is to provide a scientific, yet practical, approach to the design and analysis of swarm systems. The team robots could vary widely in type, as well as size, e.g., from nanobots to micro-air vehicles (MAVs) and micro-satellites. A robot’s sensors perceive the world, including ot...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SAB
• Authors: William M. Spears, Diana F. Spears, Rodney Heil, Wesley Kerr, Suranga Hettiarachchi
• Keywords: Autonomous Distributed Robots, Obstacle Avoidance Tasks, Optimization, Robots, SAB 2004