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ABSTRACT: We report the faithful reproduction of the self-organized aggregation behavior of the German cockroach Blattella germanica with a group of robots. We describe the implementation of the biological model provided by Jeanson et al. in Alice robots, and we compare the behaviors of the cockroaches and the robots using the same experimental and analytical methodology. We show that the aggregation behavior of the German cockroach was successfully transferred to the Alice robot despite strong differences between robots and animals at the perceptual, actuatorial, and computational levels. This article highlights some of the major constraints one may encounter during such a work and proposes general principles to ensure that the behavioral model is accurately transferred to the artificial agents.
Artificial Life 07/2008; 14(4):387-408. · 2.28 Impact Factor
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2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2006, October 9-15, 2006, Beijing, China; 01/2006
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2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2006, October 9-15, 2006, Beijing, China; 01/2006
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Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 01/2004; 48:49-61.
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ABSTRACT: This paper describes the hardware and behavior implementation of a miniature robot, in size of a match box, that is able to interact with cockroaches. The robot is equipped with two micro-processors dedicated to hardware processing and behavior generation. It is also equipped with 12 infra-red proximity sensors, 2 light sensors, a linear camera and a battery that allows 3 hours autonomy. The robot can discriminate cockroaches, other robots, environment boundaries and shelters. It has also three means of communication: a wireless module for monitoring and logging, an IR remote receiver for fast supervision of biological experiment and a simple local communication protocol via infrared proximity sensors to detect robots in short range.
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ABSTRACT: Self-amplification processes are at the origin of several collective decision phenomena in insect societies. Understanding these processes requires linking individual behavioral rules of insects to a choice dynamics at the colony level. In a homogeneous environment, the German cockroach Blattella germanica displays self-amplified aggregation behavior. In a heterogeneous environment where several shelters are present, groups of cockroaches collectively select one of them. In this article, we demonstrate that the restriction of the self-amplified aggregation behavior to distinct zones in the environment can explain the emergence of a collective decision at the level of the group. This hypothesis is tested with robotics experiments and dedicated computer simulations. We show that the collective decision is influenced by the available spaces to explore and to aggregate in, by the size of the population involved in the aggregation process and by the probability of encounter zones while the robots explore the environment. We finally discuss these results from both a biological and a robotics point of view.
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ABSTRACT: Scaling down robots to miniature size introduces many new challenges including memory and program size limitations, low processor performance and low power autonomy. In this paper we describe the concept and implementation of learning of a safe-wandering task with the autonomous micro-robots, Alice. We propose a simplified reinforcement learning algorithm based on one-step Q-learning that is optimized in speed and memory consumption. This algorithm uses only integer-based sum operators and avoids floating-point and multiplication operators. Finally, quality of learning is compared to a floating-point based algorithm.
Robotics and Autonomous Systems.
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ABSTRACT: This paper describes the hardware and behavior implementation of a miniature robot in size of a match box that simulates the behavior of cockroaches in order to establish a social interaction with them. The robot is equipped with two micro-processors dedicated to hardware processing and behavior generation. The robot can discriminate cockroaches, other robots, environment boundaries and shelters. It has also three means of communication for monitoring, logging, supervision of biological experiment and detecting other robots in short range. The behavioral model of the robot is a mixture of fusion in low-level and arbitration in high-level. In arbitration level a stochastic state machine selects the proper subtask. Then in fusion level, that subtask is decomposed to a hierarchy of sub-tasks. Each sub-task generates a potential field. The resultant force is then mapped to an action.
