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A morphogenetic framework for self-organized multirobot pattern formation and boundary coverage

Published:04 May 2012Publication History
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Abstract

Embryonic development of multicellular organisms, also known as morphogenesis, is regarded as a robust self-organization process for pattern generation. Inspired by the recent findings in biology indicating that morphogen gradients, together with a Gene Regulatory Network (GRN), play a key role in biological patterning, we propose a framework for self-organized multirobot pattern formation and boundary coverage based on an artificial GRN model. The proposed framework does not need a global coordinate system, which makes it more practical to be implemented in a physical robotic system. Moreover, an adaptation mechanism is included in the framework so that the self-organization algorithm is robust to changes in the number of robots. Various case studies of multirobot pattern formation and boundary coverage show the effectiveness of the framework.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
      ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems  Volume 7, Issue 1
      Special section on formal methods in pervasive computing, pervasive adaptation, and self-adaptive systems: Models and algorithms
      April 2012
      365 pages
      ISSN:1556-4665
      EISSN:1556-4703
      DOI:10.1145/2168260
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2012 ACM

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 4 May 2012
      • Accepted: 1 August 2011
      • Revised: 1 November 2010
      • Received: 1 January 2010
      Published in taas Volume 7, Issue 1

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