Avoiding target congestion on the navigation of robotic swarms

Robotic swarms are decentralized systems formed by a large number of robots. A common problem encountered in a swarm is congestion, as a great number of robots often must move towards the same region. This happens when robots have a common target, for example during foraging or waypoint navigation. We propose three algorithms to alleviate congestion: in the first, some robots stop moving towards the target for a random number of iterations; in the second, we divide the scenario in two regions: one for the robots that are moving towards the target, and another for the L. S. Marcolino Teamcore Laboratory Computer Science Department University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Y. T. dos Passos Centro de Ciências Exatas e Tecnológicas Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia Cruz das Almas, BA, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] A. A. F. de Souza VeRLab – Vision and Robotics Laboratory Computer Science Department Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] A. S. Rodrigues Centro de Ciências Exatas e Tecnológicas Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia Cruz das Almas, BA, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] L. Chaimowicz VeRLab – Vision and Robotics Laboratory Computer Science Department Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] robots that are leaving the target; in the third, we combine the two previous algorithms. We evaluate our algorithms in simulation, where we show that all of them effectively improve navigation. Moreover, we perform an experimental analysis in the real world with ten robots, and show that all our approaches improve navigation with statistical significance.