Explicit and Implicit Directional Information Transfer in Collective Motion

We study the cohesive coordinated collective motion of a group of mobile autonomous robots. We use virtual interactions between robots implemented via proximal control, a method that allows the robots to reach a stable formation using virtual potential functions (Turgut et al., 2008; Ferrante et al., 2011). The alignment component can be seen as a mechanism for directional information transfer (Sumpter et al., 2008). We refer here to information transfer in collective motion as the process through which the orientation of a robot is transferred to its neighbors over time. In this paper, we design two information transfer mechanisms for collective motion in a group of mobile robots. The first mechanism exploits direct information transfer using communication, and can be implemented on robots equipped with proximity sensors, with an orientation sensing mechanism and with a communication device. We propose communication strategies that allow a group of robots that is informed about a desired direction of motion to influence the rest of the group (Couzin et al., 2005; Ferrante et al., 2011). The second mechanism consists of information transfer without the alignment component and communication (Ferrante et al., 2012), which can be used on simpler robots that are only equipped with proximity sensors. We developed a simple motion control mechanism that allows a group of robots to perform collective motion in a random direction with neither the need of robots informed about a desired direction nor of an explicit alignment behavior. As such, information among the robots is transferred indirectly.