Revisiting BEECLUST: Aggregation of Swarm Robots with Adaptiveness to Different Light Settings

Abstract

Aggregation is a crucial task in swarm robotics to ensure cooperation. We investigate the task of aggregation on an area specified indirectly by certain environmental features, here it is a light distribution. We extend the original BEECLUST algorithm, that implements an aggregation behavior, to an adaptive variant that automatically adapts to any light conditions. We compare these two control algorithms in a number of swarm robot experiments with different light conditions. The improved, adaptive variant is found to be significantly better in the tested setup.