This paper addresses the problem of foraging by a coordinated team of robots. This coordination is achieved by markers deposited by robots. In this paper, we present a novel decentralized behavioral model for multi robot foraging named cooperative c-marking agent model. In such model, each robot makes a decision according to the affluence of resource locations, either to spread information on a...

The foraging task is one of the canonical testbeds for cooperative robotics, in which a collection of robots have to find and transport one or more objects to specific storagepoints. Efficiency in foraging can be improved with coordinated team of robots. Swarm robotics investigates the bio-inspired behaviors of simple species, that provide complex behaviors at the group level. We present a mult...

Robot foraging, a frequently used test application for collective robotics, consists in a group of robots retrieving a set of opportunely defined objects to a target location. A commonly observed experimental result is that the retrieving efficiency of the group of robots, measured for example as the number of units retrieved by a robot in a given time interval, tends to decrease with increasin...

The paper presents a series of experiments in a simulated environment where two autonomous mobile robots gather randomly distributed objects and cluster them into one pile. The coordination of the robots' movements is achieved through stigmergy (an indirect form of communication through the environment). In order to avoid the drawback of the random moves, necessary for stigmergy based foraging ...

We introduce the Maximum Sustainable Yield problem for a multi-robot foraging and construction system, inspired by the relationship between the natural resource growth and harvesting behaviors in an ecosystem. The resources spawn according to the logistic model and are vulnerable to overharvesting. The robots must maintain sustainability while maximizing productivity. The foraging robots harves...

In the multi-foraging task under study, a group of robots has to efficiently retrieve two different types of prey to a nest. We define efficiency using a concept of energy that is spent by the robots when they leave the nest to explore the environment and gained when a prey is successfully retrieved to the nest. The goal of this study is to identify the characteristics of an efficient multi-for...

In multi-robot applications, such as foraging or collection tasks, interference, which results from competition for space between spatially extended robots, can signi cantly a ect the performance of the group. We present a mathematical model of foraging in a homogeneous multi-robot system, with the goal of understanding quantitatively the e ects of interference. We examine two foraging scenario...

Swarm robotics is a relatively new approach to the coordination of a system composed of a large number of autonomous robots. The coordination among the robots is achieved in a self-organised manner: the collective behaviour of the robots is the result of local interactions among robots, and between the robots and the environment. Each single robot typically has limited sensing, acting and compu...

Foraging theory originated in attempts to address puzzling findings that arose in ethological studies of food seeking and prey selection among animals. The potential utilization of biomimicry of social foraging strategies to develop advanced controllers and cooperative control strategies for autonomous vehicles is an emergent research topic. The activity of foraging can be focused as an optimiz...

In this paper, we experiment, from the point of view of their efficiency, different implementations of the "explorer robots application". Three types of "Tom Thumb robots", whose behavior is based on the foraging behaviors of ants are proposed and their results are critically examined. We then introduce chain-making robots (the "dockers"), governed by local perceptions and interactions. This he...