Visual cooperation based on LOS for self-organization of swarm robots

In this study, an attempt has been made to incorporate visual cooperation among decentralized swarm robots for self-organization. Self-organization based on color recognition is presented to overcome the constraints faced in conventional self-organization based on centralized control, in which an external ceiling camera or beacon systems are used. In the proposed scheme, a singular association rule is introduced: a swarm robot considers line-of-sight (LOS) visual information only about its reference robot or a moving target. In particular, this paper presents the following set of cases pertaining to self-organization of swarm robots: 1) a case in which a robot loses a moving target from its LOS, 2) a case in which a robot loses a reference robot from its LOS, 3) a case in which a robot is lost, and 4) a case in which all robots lose the target from their LOS. Results of a simulation and an experiment on prey pursuit show that the proposed self-organization method can be effectively used for multiple mobile robots, despite the use of a simple association rule.