TY - JOUR
T1 - Experimental study and modeling of group retrieval in ants as an approach to collective transport in swarm robotic systems
AU - Berman, Spring
AU - Lindsey, Quentin
AU - Sakar, Mahmut Selman
AU - Kumar, Vijay
AU - Pratt, Stephen
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received June 8, 2010; revised November 21, 2010; accepted January 15, 2011. Date of publication May 27, 2011; date of current version August 19, 2011. This work was supported by NSF IIS-0427313, by ARO Grant W911NF-05-1-0219, and by ONR Grant N00014-07-1-0829 and Grant N00014-08-1-0696. S. Berman is with the Department of Computer Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA (e-mail: sberman@eecs.harvard.edu). Q. Lindsey and V. Kumar are with the GRASP Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA (e-mail: quentinl@seas.upenn.edu; kumar@seas.upenn.edu). M. S. Sakar is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA (e-mail: selman@mit.edu). S. C. Pratt is with the School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA (e-mail: Stephen.Pratt@asu.edu).
PY - 2011/9
Y1 - 2011/9
N2 - Group food retrieval in some ant species serves as a useful paradigm for multirobot collective transport strategies that are decentralized, scalable, and do not require a priori information about the payload. We present a comprehensive overview of group retrieval in ants and investigate this phenomenon in Aphaenogaster cockerelli in order to extract the ants' roles during transport, the rules that govern their actions, and the individual forces that they apply to guide a food item to their nest. To measure these forces, we fabricated elastic structures with calibrated stiffness properties, induced ants to retrieve the structures, and tracked the resulting deformations with a camera. We then developed a hybrid system model of the ant behaviors that were observed in the experiments. We conducted simulations of the behavioral model that incorporate a quasi-static model of planar manipulation with compliant attachment points. Our simulations qualitatively replicate individual ant activity as well as certain macroscopic features of the transport.
AB - Group food retrieval in some ant species serves as a useful paradigm for multirobot collective transport strategies that are decentralized, scalable, and do not require a priori information about the payload. We present a comprehensive overview of group retrieval in ants and investigate this phenomenon in Aphaenogaster cockerelli in order to extract the ants' roles during transport, the rules that govern their actions, and the individual forces that they apply to guide a food item to their nest. To measure these forces, we fabricated elastic structures with calibrated stiffness properties, induced ants to retrieve the structures, and tracked the resulting deformations with a camera. We then developed a hybrid system model of the ant behaviors that were observed in the experiments. We conducted simulations of the behavioral model that incorporate a quasi-static model of planar manipulation with compliant attachment points. Our simulations qualitatively replicate individual ant activity as well as certain macroscopic features of the transport.
KW - Biological system modeling
KW - cooperative manipulation
KW - distributed control
KW - multirobot systems
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U2 - 10.1109/JPROC.2011.2111450
DO - 10.1109/JPROC.2011.2111450
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80052034542
SN - 0018-9219
VL - 99
SP - 1470
EP - 1481
JO - Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers
JF - Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers
IS - 9
M1 - 5776638
ER -