Occlusion-Based Object Transportation Around Obstacles With a Swarm of Miniature Robots

Abstract Swarm robotics utilises decentralised self-organising systems to form complex collective behaviours built from the bottom-up using individuals that have limited capabilities. Previous work has shown that simple occlusion-based strategies can be effective in using swam robotics for the task of transporting objects to a goal position. However, this strategy requires a clear line-of-sight between object and goal. In this paper, we extend this strategy by allowing robots to form sub-goals; enabling any member of the swarm to establish a wider range of visibility of the goal, ultimately forming a chain of sub-goals between the object and the goal position. We do so while maintaining the fully decentralised and communication-free nature of the original strategy. In three sets of simulated experiments, we demonstrate that our proposed approach allows a swarm of sufficient size to successfully transport objects around obstacles that occlude the goal from the starting position of the object, that this strategy is robust to different object shapes, and that our proposed changes do not reduce the performance of the strategy in environments where obstacles are not present.