Collective and Cooperative Group Behaviours: Biologically Inspired Experiments in Robotics

This paper describes the implementation of two biologically inspired collective behaviours on a group of Khepera miniature mobile robots. The rst experiment is concerned with the gathering and clustering of randomly distributed small cylinders. In the second experiment the group of robots are expected to remove long sticks from holes, requiring a synchronous collaboration between two robots. The results are quanti ed, analysed and discussed, showing interesting (both positive and negative) aspects of this approach. Furthermore, we compare the results of both experiments with those reported by Deneubourg [1], [2] where similar behaviours are observed in ant colonies.