Introduction of Swarm Robotics and basics.pptx
- 1. OEEC002: SWARM ROBOTICS CONTROL SYSTEMS Department of ECE
- 2. 2 Syllabus Module 1: Introduction, swarm intelligence and robotics. Definition swarm robotics, nature swarm, Characteristics of nature swarms, special features of the swarm robotics, single robot and other multi-individual systems, nature swarm to swarm intelligence, Advantages of swarm robotics. Module 2: Single robot- Parallel, Scalable, Stable, Economical, Energy efficient, Different multi-agent systems: Tasks cover large area robot, Tasks dangerous to robot, scaling population and redundancy, Swarm robotics system in real life. Modelling swarm robotics, General model of swarm robotics, Information exchange module, Direct communication, Communication through environment- Sensing, Basic behaviour module. Module 3: Modelling methods for swarm robotics. Sensor-based modelling, microscopic modelling, Macroscopic modelling, Modelling swarm intelligence algorithms, Cooperation schemes between robots, Architecture of swarm, Locating, Physical connections, Self-organization and self-assembly, Entity projects and simulations. Module 4: Cooperative algorithms, earlier progress of swarm robotics algorithms, Features of swarm robotics algorithm, Decentralization, Local, Parallel, Fundamental tasks of swarm robotics, Formation, Potential field functions, Positioning and navigation, Navigation, Obstacle avoidance, Swarm robotics searching algorithms, inspired from swarm intelligence algorithms, Optimizing the parameters, Modelling the individual behaviours, Mixing and Inspired methods. Course Syllabus
- 3. 3 THIS SEMESTER WE WILL STUDY MANY ASPECTS OF SWARM ROBOTICS AND IN THIS MODULE • Introduction, swarm intelligence and robotics. • Definition swarm robotics, • Nature swarm, • Characteristics of nature swarms, • Special features of the swarm robotics, • Single robot and other multi-individual systems, • Nature swarm to swarm intelligence, • Advantages of swarm robotics.
- 4. AIM OF THE SESSION To familiarize students with the basic concept of Swarm Robotics INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES This Session is designed to: Introduction of Swarm Robotics LEARNING OUTCOMES At the end of this session, you should be able to: Introduction of Swarm Robotics, General Robot Structures, General Definitions
- 5. 5 SESSION INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction of Swarm Robotics 2. General Swarm Robot Structures 3. General Definitions
- 6. 6 What is a Swarm? Swarm behavior refers to the collective movement and coordinated activity of a group of individuals, typically animals, that act together without centralized control. It is a phenomenon observed in nature and can be applied to artificial systems. Swarm behavior is characterized by simple rules followed by individuals that lead to complex group dynamics, often resulting in emergent properties.
- 7. 7 Key Characteristics 1.Decentralized Control: No individual directs the swarm; coordination emerges from local interactions. 2.Self-Organization: The swarm organizes itself based on simple rules or behaviors. 3.Emergent Behavior: Complex global patterns arise from simple individual actions. 4.Adaptability: Swarms can quickly adapt to changing environments or external threats. Examples in Nature 1.Insects: 1. Ants use pheromone trails to find food and organize colony tasks. 2. Bees communicate using the "waggle dance" to locate resources. 2.Birds: Flocking birds, like starlings, form murmurations to evade predators and navigate efficiently. 3.Fish: Schools of fish move cohesively to reduce predation risk and enhance foraging. 4.Mammals: Herds of animals like wildebeests migrate collectively for resources. 5.Microorganisms: Bacteria exhibit swarming motility to colonize new areas or resist antibiotics.
- 8. 8 Applications in Technology 1.Swarm Robotics: Coordination of multiple robots for tasks like exploration, search-and-rescue, and environmental monitoring. 2.Optimization Algorithms: Algorithms like Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) are inspired by swarm behavior to solve complex optimization problems. 3.Unmanned Vehicles: Swarming behavior is applied to drones for surveillance, delivery systems, and defense applications. 4.Computer Graphics: Simulating realistic animal movements in movies or games. 5.Traffic Management: Designing traffic flow systems using principles of swarm intelligence. Principles of Swarm Intelligence 1.Proximity Interaction: Individuals interact with their nearest neighbors. 2.Alignment: Individuals align their movement direction with the group. 3.Cohesion: Individuals move towards the group's center to maintain unity. 4.Separation: Individuals avoid crowding by maintaining a minimum distance. 5.Information Sharing: Sharing local information enhances global decision-making.
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- 10. 10 How Big Is a Swarm?. The size of a swarm can vary significantly depending on the species, context, and purpose. Swarms can range from a few individuals to millions, depending on the conditions and the type of organisms involved. Here are some examples across different contexts: Biological Swarms 1.Insects: •Ants: A swarm might consist of hundreds to thousands of ants coordinating for foraging or nest-building. •Locusts: Swarms can grow to billions of individuals, covering areas spanning hundreds of square kilometers. •Bees: A swarm typically ranges from a few hundred to tens of thousands, often during colony relocation. 2.Birds: •Starlings: Murmurations can include thousands to hundreds of thousands of birds moving in unison. •Flamingos: Flocks can number in the tens of thousands. 3.Fish: •Schools: Swarms of fish can include millions of individuals, particularly in species like sardines (e.g., the "sardine run" off the coast of South Africa). 4.Microorganisms: •Bacteria: Swarms consist of millions or billions of cells moving collectively on a substrate. •Zooplankton: Swarms in the ocean can span several kilometers.
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- 12. 12 Swarm robotics is a field of robotics inspired by the collective behavior of natural swarms, such as ants, bees, and birds, where a large group of simple robots works together to perform tasks through decentralized control and local interactions. These robots communicate and collaborate using simple rules, enabling them to exhibit emergent behavior, such as adaptability, scalability, and fault tolerance. Applications of swarm robotics include search-and-rescue operations, environmental monitoring, agricultural automation, and exploration in hazardous or remote environments. By mimicking natural swarm principles, swarm robotics aims to achieve complex objectives that would be challenging or inefficient for a single robot or centralized system. Artificial Swarms 1.Swarm Robotics: • Practical applications often involve swarms of 10 to 1,000 robots for tasks like exploration or disaster response. • Research has scaled simulations to tens of thousands to explore potential behaviors and interactions. 2.Drone Swarms: • Currently, practical swarms consist of tens to hundreds of drones, though experimental swarms can include thousands. What Is Swarm Robotics?
- 13. 13 Swarm robotics is pursued because it offers significant advantages over traditional robotics systems, particularly in tasks requiring scalability, adaptability, and robustness. Here are the key reasons: 1. Scalability: Swarm robotics can be scaled easily by adding or removing robots without significantly impacting overall performance. This is ideal for tasks requiring coverage of large areas or complex environments. 2. Fault Tolerance: The decentralized nature of swarm robotics ensures that the failure of a few robots does not cripple the system, as the swarm can adapt and continue functioning. 3. Cost-Effectiveness: Swarm systems often use many simple, low-cost robots, making them more economical than a single, highly complex robot. 4. Adaptability: Swarm robotics can adapt to dynamic and unpredictable environments by leveraging local interactions and emergent behavior. 5. Parallelism: Tasks can be divided among multiple robots, allowing for simultaneous execution, increasing efficiency, and reducing task completion time. 6. Inspiration from Nature: Mimicking natural systems like ant colonies and bird flocks provides proven strategies for solving complex problems collaboratively. 7. Wide Applications: Swarm robotics is useful in areas like disaster response, environmental monitoring, exploration, agriculture, and defense, where robustness and flexibility are crucial. Why Swarm Robotics?
- 14. 14 Swarm robotics is often misunderstood or conflated with other concepts in robotics and systems engineering. To clarify, swarm robotics is NOT: 1. Centralized Control Systems: Swarm robotics relies on decentralized coordination, where individual robots act based on local information. Systems with a central controller directing all actions do not qualify as swarm robotics. 2. Single-Robot Systems: Swarm robotics inherently involves multiple robots working collectively. A single, highly capable robot performing complex tasks independently is not swarm robotics. 3. Heterogeneous Robot Teams: While some swarm systems may have minor variations among robots, traditional multi-robot systems involving distinctly different robots with specialized roles (e.g., a drone paired with a ground robot) are not typical swarm robotics. 4. Ad-Hoc Networking Alone: While communication is essential in swarm robotics, a simple network of robots exchanging data without exhibiting collective behavior and emergent properties does not qualify. 5. Pre-Programmed Coordination: Systems where robots execute pre-determined, rigid coordination patterns (e.g., synchronized movements from a fixed script) lack the adaptability and emergent behavior of true swarms. 6. Supervised Robotics: Swarm robotics emphasizes autonomy; systems that rely on significant human intervention or direct control are not considered swarms. 7. Static Systems: Swarm robotics involves dynamic and adaptive interactions among robots. A group of robots positioned statically without interaction does not exhibit swarm behavior. What Is Not Swarm Robotics?
- 15. 15 Special features of the swarm robotics Swarm robotics has several special features that distinguish it from other robotics paradigms. These include: 1.Decentralized Coordination: Swarm robotics relies on distributed control, where each robot acts independently based on local rules and interactions without a central controller. 2.Emergent Behavior: The collective behavior of the swarm arises naturally from the interactions among individual robots, enabling complex tasks to be accomplished without pre-defined global strategies. 3.Scalability: The system can easily scale up or down in size, as the same principles apply regardless of the number of robots. 4.Flexibility: Swarm robotic systems can adapt to dynamic and unpredictable environments, making them suitable for a wide range of applications. 5.Fault Tolerance: The system is robust to the failure of individual robots, as the overall functionality is distributed and redundant.
- 16. 16 6. Self-Organization: Robots in the swarm can organize themselves into functional patterns or groups without external guidance. 7. Parallelism: Multiple robots can perform tasks simultaneously, increasing efficiency and reducing the time required to complete tasks. 8. Cost-Effectiveness: Swarm robotics typically uses many simple, low-cost robots rather than a single, highly complex one, reducing overall system costs. 9. Proximity-Based Interaction: Robots primarily rely on local communication and sensing, reducing the need for complex global communication networks. 10. Bio-Inspiration: Swarm robotics draws inspiration from natural systems like ant colonies, bee swarms, bird flocks, and fish schools, incorporating their efficiency and adaptability into engineered systems. Special features of the swarm robotics
- 17. 17 SUMMARY Definition: Swarm robotics is a decentralized and autonomous robotics approach inspired by natural swarms, where multiple simple robots collaborate to perform complex tasks through local interactions and emergent behaviors. Advantages: It offers scalability, fault tolerance, adaptability to dynamic environments, cost-effectiveness, and parallel task execution, making it ideal for large-scale, distributed applications. Applications: Key uses include disaster response, environmental monitoring, exploration of hazardous areas, agricultural automation, and defense, where robustness and flexibility are crucial. Distinction: Swarm robotics is not centralized, supervised, or pre-programmed coordination but relies on dynamic, self-organized interactions among robots to achieve collective intelligence.
- 18. 18 TERMINAL QUESTIONS 1. Define communication through the environment and its role in swarm robotics. 2. Define swarm intelligence and discuss its significance in robotics. 3. Define swarm robotics and its primary characteristics. 4. Deliberate how ants and bees have inspired swarm intelligence models. 5. Discuss the advantages of environment-based communication over direct communication. 6. Discuss the challenges of implementing direct communication in swarm robotics. 7. Discuss the concept of decentralized control in natural swarms. 8. Discuss the factors affecting the scalability of single-robot systems. 9. Discuss the historical development of swarm intelligence. 10. Discuss the advantages and challenges of direct communication in swarm robotics. 11. Explain the key components of swarm intelligence in robotic systems. 12. Explain the mechanisms of direct communication in multi-agent systems. 13. Explain the role of bio-inspiration in the development of swarm intelligence. 14. Explain the role of redundancy in enhancing the reliability of swarm robotics systems. 15. Explain the role of swarm robotics in environmental monitoring. 16. Explain the role of swarm robotics in improving resource optimization
- 19. 19 REFERENCES FOR FURTHER LEARNING OF THE SESSION 1. “Robotics and Control” by R.K.Mittal and I. J. Nagrath,, Tata McGraw Hill, New Delhi,4th Reprint, 2005. 2. "Swarm Intelligence: Principles, Advances, and Applications" by Simon Garnier Publisher: Oxford University Press Year: 2018 3. "Swarm Robotics: A Comprehensive Overview" edited by Ester Martinez- Martin, Pilar R. Boullosa, and Enrique Onieva Publisher: Springer Year: 2018
- 20. 20 THANK YOU Team – Robotics and Automation
Editor's Notes
- #3: Robotics is a multidisciplinary field that involves the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Robots are autonomous or semi-autonomous machines or mechanical devices that can perform tasks with a high degree of autonomy. These tasks can range from simple, repetitive actions to complex, problem-solving activities. Robotics combines elements from various fields such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence to create machines that can interact with the physical world.