Spontaneous Emergence of Multitasking Robotic Swarms

Ji Zhang, Yiming Liang, Shiqiang Zhu, Tian Xiang, Hongwei Zhu, Jason Gu, Wei Song, Tiefeng Li

Abstract: Robot swarms promise to replace humans in complex scenarios like resource exploration, environmental monitoring, and military missions. These complex scenarios require robots to be able to complete multiple tasks at the same time adaptively. From the point of view of statistical mechanics, the phenomenon of the multiply states of a given system is a kind of partial synchronization. Inspired by biological groups such as flocks of birds and schools of fish, we model the robots as self-propelled particles with Kuramoto-Sakaguchi like interactions. We uncover the state of the robot swarm can be manipulated using the phase lag of the Kuramoto-Sakaguchi like interactions. The system is partially synchronized at the edge between order and disorder, and the robots present two distinguished motion patterns, one is completely periodic movement, and the other one is chaos. This study provides new insights into the collaboration of robot swarms.