Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots
Learning capabilities, often guided by competition/cooperation, play a fundamental and ubiquitous role in living beings. Moreover, several behaviours, such as feeding and courtship, involve environmental exploration and exploitation, including local competition, and lead to a global benefit for the...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
SAGE Publishing
2015-10-01
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| Series: | International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5772/60545 |
| _version_ | 1818495134417813504 |
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| author | Alessandra Vitanza Luca Patanè Paolo Arena |
| author_facet | Alessandra Vitanza Luca Patanè Paolo Arena |
| author_sort | Alessandra Vitanza |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Learning capabilities, often guided by competition/cooperation, play a fundamental and ubiquitous role in living beings. Moreover, several behaviours, such as feeding and courtship, involve environmental exploration and exploitation, including local competition, and lead to a global benefit for the colony. This can be considered as a form of global cooperation, even if the individual agent is not aware of the overall effect. This paper aims to demonstrate that identical biorobots, endowed with simple neural controllers, can evolve diversified behaviours and roles when competing for the same resources in the same arena. These behaviours also produce a benefit in terms of time and energy spent by the whole group. The robots are tasked with a classical foraging task structured through the cyclic activation of resources. The result is that each individual robot, while competing to reach the maximum number of available targets, tends to prefer a specific sequence of subtasks. This indirectly leads to the global result of task partitioning whereby the cumulative energy spent, in terms of the overall travelled distance and the time needed to complete the task, tends to be minimized. A series of simulation experiments is conducted using different numbers of robots and scenarios: the common emergent result obtained is the role-specialization of each robot. The description of the neural controller and the specialization mechanisms are reported in detail and discussed. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-10T18:16:18Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-5e48deff20934f7e944a08801609be03 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1729-8814 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-10T18:16:18Z |
| publishDate | 2015-10-01 |
| publisher | SAGE Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems |
| spelling | doaj.art-5e48deff20934f7e944a08801609be032022-12-22T01:38:19ZengSAGE PublishingInternational Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems1729-88142015-10-011210.5772/6054510.5772_60545Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-RobotsAlessandra Vitanza0Luca Patanè1Paolo Arena2 University of Catania, Catania, Italy University of Catania, Catania, Italy University of Catania, Catania, ItalyLearning capabilities, often guided by competition/cooperation, play a fundamental and ubiquitous role in living beings. Moreover, several behaviours, such as feeding and courtship, involve environmental exploration and exploitation, including local competition, and lead to a global benefit for the colony. This can be considered as a form of global cooperation, even if the individual agent is not aware of the overall effect. This paper aims to demonstrate that identical biorobots, endowed with simple neural controllers, can evolve diversified behaviours and roles when competing for the same resources in the same arena. These behaviours also produce a benefit in terms of time and energy spent by the whole group. The robots are tasked with a classical foraging task structured through the cyclic activation of resources. The result is that each individual robot, while competing to reach the maximum number of available targets, tends to prefer a specific sequence of subtasks. This indirectly leads to the global result of task partitioning whereby the cumulative energy spent, in terms of the overall travelled distance and the time needed to complete the task, tends to be minimized. A series of simulation experiments is conducted using different numbers of robots and scenarios: the common emergent result obtained is the role-specialization of each robot. The description of the neural controller and the specialization mechanisms are reported in detail and discussed.https://doi.org/10.5772/60545 |
| spellingShingle | Alessandra Vitanza Luca Patanè Paolo Arena Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems |
| title | Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots |
| title_full | Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots |
| title_fullStr | Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots |
| title_full_unstemmed | Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots |
| title_short | Emergence of Diversity in a Group of Identical Bio-Robots |
| title_sort | emergence of diversity in a group of identical bio robots |
| url | https://doi.org/10.5772/60545 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT alessandravitanza emergenceofdiversityinagroupofidenticalbiorobots AT lucapatane emergenceofdiversityinagroupofidenticalbiorobots AT paoloarena emergenceofdiversityinagroupofidenticalbiorobots |