Macroscopic Observation of Multi-robot Behavior

This paper presents a new approach to the observation and the control of the behavior of multiple autonomous robots. It is the microscopic observation expressed by dynamic equations that has been commonly employed to observe the multi-robot behavior. However, the approach has the difficulties in estimating the behavior and the mutual interactions of robots. Furthermore, it is hard to realize the system by checking up all the factors of the system. It seems that a macroscopic observation defined by state equations is efficient for recognizing the multiple robots behavior. Therefore, we would like to propose a quantitative observation approach. This attempt means the application of the thermodynamic macroscopic state values to the multi-robot systems. The advantage of this approach is that it enables us to observe the behavior of autonomous robots in real world by mapping the characteristic values of them in another conceptual state space. First, we discuss the implication of applying a quantitative observation on multiple robots. Next we define the thermodynamic macroscopic state values, such as temperature, pressure and entropy, in mobile robots systems. Each mobile robot is regarded as a particle in thermodynamic systems. We then set up an experiment to show that the states of robots system can be classified by thermodynamic macroscopic state value. This verifies that the macroscopic quantitative observation is efficient and applicable to control multi-robot systems. Finally, we demonstrate an application of the proposed approach to controlling the multi-robot behavior.