Ant-like task allocation and recruitment in cooperative robots

One of the greatest challenges in robotics is to create machines that are a ble to interact with unpredictable environments in real time. A possible so lution may be to use swarms of robots behaving in a self-organized manner, similar to workers in an ant colony(1-5). Efficient mechanisms of division of labour, in particular series-parallel operation and transfer of informat ion among group members(6), are key components of the tremendous ecological success of ants(7,8). Here we show that the general principles regulating division of labour in ant colonies indeed allow the design of flexible, rob ust and effective robotic systems. Groups of robots using ant-inspired algo rithms of decentralized control techniques foraged more efficiently and mai ntained higher levels of group energy than single robots. But the benefits of group living decreased in larger groups, most probably because of interf erence during foraging. Intriguingly, a similar relationship between group size and efficiency has been documented in social insects(9-11). Moreover, when food items were clustered, groups where robots could recruit other rob ots in an ant-like manner were more efficient than groups without informati on transfer, suggesting that group dynamics of swarms of robots may follow rules similar to those governing social insects.