NICOP - Coordinated Swarm Behavior with Minimal Communication in Complex Topographies
Abstract
When locating one or multiple targets in space within time constraints, adopting theright search strategy can make the difference between succeeding and failing. At different scales, thisapplies to human and robotic rescuers during search-and-rescue operations in disaster zones, to animalsforaging in natural landscapes and to nano-robots navigating through living tissue for biomedicalpurposes. In the absence of environmental cues and with limited cognitive abilities that could drive themotion of the searching agent, classes of random walks (e.g. L??vy walks and intermittent searches)represent established search patterns in homogeneous topographies. However, most search spacespresent complex, uneven topographies where boundaries, barriers and obstacles are present (e.g. insearches through ruins, on complex terrains or on uneven seabed and littorals). These crucial featuresof search spaces have been continuously overlooked when defining motion strategies and searchefficiencies for both individual particles and swarms of, e.g., unmanned autonomous technologies. Thisproposal aims at experimentally determining what is the best search strategy for both individualsearchers and swarms in these more realistic search scenarios under the constraint of minimal or noinformation exchange.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 19, 2018
- Source ID
- N629091812170
Entities
People
- Giorgio Volpe
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University College London