Honeybee behavior as a model for decision-making in a kilobot swarm

Researchers on the University of Barcelona have made a candy discovery: Honeybees make nice topics when learning the dynamic of group conduct and decision-making.

In a not too long ago launched examine, Professor M. Carmen Miguel, who has beforehand studied management exercise amongst education fish and social interactions amongst flocks of birds, stated a gaggle of mini robots had been educated to succeed in a consensus on duties by mimicking processes displayed by bees.

The intricate conduct of bees has lengthy been a topic of nice curiosity amongst researchers. There are greater than 4,000 species of the insect, they usually have been round for greater than 100 million years.

The Barcelona researchers designed and constructed a military of 35 kilobots outfitted with tiny legs, LED lights, an infrared-light receiver, and dance strikes considerably much less intricate than John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction” however nonetheless spectacular.

They had been programmed to duplicate interactions amongst bees with abilities similar to mild recognition and movement indicators.

Every bot was tasked with discovering a possible nesting location for the colony after which forging a consensus among the many different bots on the optimum spot.

The bot conduct was modeled after “scout” bees, the realtors within the kingdom of Apis mellifera (honeybees) who typically are older, wiser, and educated about prime spots to construct a brand new hive, similar to in knotholes, crevices, or the eaves of a house. Additionally they search sources of meals.

When a scout sights a possible hive web site it does a “gaggle dance,” a collection of quickly swaying motions in a formation roughly resembling a determine eight.

The dance conveys the diploma of desirability and sure particulars of the potential hive or meals supply. The dance indicators to bees the gap and path of the potential hive from the dance and, if associated to a supply of meals, the sort and measurement of that meals provide.

The extra fascinating the positioning, the longer and extra frequent the dance.

The researchers devised a mathematical model representing the hive location activity. They then launched the 35 kilobots—every 3 centimeters broad—with directions to convey their “opinions” about an excellent hive web site to their fellow bots.

“Our experiments demonstrate that the kilobot swarm can collectively reach consensus decisions in a decentralized manner, akin to honeybees,” Miguel concluded. “These factors enable the formation of a percolated communication network, through which each robot can receive information beyond its immediate vicinity.”

Miguel stated she believes the examine will assist result in the event of “simple robots” that can make choices in “a decentralized, autonomous manner.”

Such mini bots may talk with each other whereas monitoring illness tissue or physique abnormalities from inside topics, or be dispatched in search-and rescue missions deemed to dangerous for people.

“By shedding light on this crucial layer of complexity,” Miguel stated, “we emphasize the significance of factors typically overlooked but essential to living systems and life itself.”

The paper, “Honeybee-like collective decision-making in a kilobot swarm,” was uploaded to the arXiv preprint server.

© 2023 Science X Community