Abstract
In this study, an attempt has been made to incorporate visual cooperation among decentralized swarm robots for self-organization. Self-organization based on color recognition is presented to overcome the constraints faced in conventional self-organization based on centralized control, in which an external ceiling camera or beacon systems are used. In the proposed scheme, a singular association rule is introduced: a swarm robot considers line-of-sight (LOS) visual information only about its reference robot or a moving target. In particular, this paper presents the following set of cases pertaining to self-organization of swarm robots: 1) a case in which a robot loses a moving target from its LOS, 2) a case in which a robot loses a reference robot from its LOS, 3) a case in which a robot is lost, and 4) a case in which all robots lose the target from their LOS. Results of a simulation and an experiment on prey pursuit show that the proposed self-organization method can be effectively used for multiple mobile robots, despite the use of a simple association rule.
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Recommended by Editorial Board member Yangmin Li under the direction of Editor Hyouk Ryeol Choi.
This work was supported by Kyungnam University Foundation Grant, 2010.
Hahmin Jung received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Division of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Advanced Engineering, Kyungnam University, Korea, in 2009 and 2011, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Advanced Engineering from Kyungnam University. His research interests include swarm robots, localization, and behavior algorithms.
Yeongyun Kim received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Division of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Advanced Engineering, Kyungnam University, Korea, in 2009 and 2012, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Advanced Engineering from Kyungnam University. His research interests include swarm robots, mobile robots, localization, and behavior algorithms.
Dong Hun Kim received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Hanyang University, Korea, in 1995, 1997, and 2001, respectively. From 2001 to 2003, he was a research associate under several grants in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University, NC, USA. In 2003, he joined Boston University, MA, USA, as a visiting assistant professor under several grants at the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. In 2004, he was engaged in post-doctoral research at the School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, Japan. Since 2005, he has been an associate professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Kyungnam University, Korea. His research interests include swarmintelligence, self-organization of swarm systems, mobile robot path planning, decentralized control of autonomous vehicles, intelligent control, and adaptive nonlinear control.
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Jung, H., Kim, Y. & Kim, D.H. Visual cooperation based on LOS for self-organization of swarm robots. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 11, 216–224 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-011-9202-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-011-9202-x