This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Osherovich, E. Articles by Bruckstein, A. M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Robust and Efficient Covering of Unknown Continuous Domains with Simple, Ant-Like A(ge)nts

The Computer Science Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel oeli{at}cs.technion.ac.il

Vladimir Yanovki

The Computer Science Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel

Israel A. Wagner

IBM Haifa Research Lab, Haifa, 31905, Israel

Alfred M. Bruckstein

The Computer Science Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel

We propose a new `Mark-Ant-Walk' algorithm for robust and efficient covering of continuous domains by ant-like robots with very limited capabilities. The robots can mark places visited with pheromone marks and sense the level of the pheromone in their local neighborhood. In the case of multiple robots, these pheromone marks can be sensed by all robots and provide the only way of (indirect) communication between the robots. The robots are assumed to be memoryless, and to have no information besides that mentioned above. Despite the robots' simplicity we show that they are able, by running a very simple rule of behavior, to ensure efficient covering of arbitrary connected domains, including non-planar and multidimensional domains. The novelty of our algorithm lies in the fact that, unlike previously proposed methods, our algorithm works on continuous domains without relying on some induced underlying graph effectively reducing the problem to a discrete case of graph covering. In addition, we demonstrate various benefits of our algorithm such as ability to cope with arbitrary initial pheromone profile and a bounded constant time between two successive visits of the robot at the same location, making it suitable for patrolling. Finally, we provide a new theoretical bound on covering time of a wide family of such mark and walk algorithms.

Key Words: ant robotics • covering • domain coverage • swarm intelligence • distributed robots

The International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol. 27, No. 7, 815-831 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0278364908092465


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?