𝔖 Bobbio Scriptorium
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Understanding collective aggregation mechanisms: From probabilistic modelling to experiments with real robots

✍ Scribed by A Martinoli; A.J Ijspeert; F Mondada


Book ID
104357405
Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
1999
Tongue
English
Weight
619 KB
Volume
29
Category
Article
ISSN
0921-8890

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✦ Synopsis


This paper presents an experiment of clustering implemented at three different levels: in a hardware implementation, in a sensor-based simulation and in a probabilistic model. The experiment consists of small reactive autonomous robots gathering and clustering randomly distributed objects. It is shown that, while the behaviour of the real robots can be faithfully reproduced in a sensor-based simulation, the evolution of the cluster sizes is perfectly described, both qualitatively and quantitatively, by a simple probabilistic model. Rather than simulating robots moving within an environment, the probabilistic model represents the clustering activity as a sequence of probabilistic events during which cluster sizes can be modified depending on simple geometrical considerations.