Using Stigmergy to Make Emerging Collective Behaviors

The design of an autonomous robot should start from the available hardware where microelectronics is just a part of a more complex architecture. The complementary rôles of electrical and mechanical devices are such that the latter cannot be ignored at all, as it has usually made in the world of computers, because the interactions between the physical components of the robot are not neglectable. This is why terms such as embodiment or situatedness are so meaningful during the design phase of its governor’s unit: its behaviour cannot be controlled as if the robot were a merely symbol manipulating process. The physics of the world is reflected on the way the interation between the component parts propagates to and from the environment. The situation is made more intricate when a group of robots are trying to cooperate for a common goal. In this case the best solution is given if the individual behaviors of each group component take advantages, the most it is possibile, from the environment. To this aim we suggest the use of stigmergy, detected by a number of the so called macroparameters and triggered by a dynamical assignement of rôles, to force the emergence of a collective behavior.