Cockroach Inspired Shelter Seeking for Holonomic Swarms of Flying Robots

Abstract

In computer science, the study of mimicking nature has given rise to Swarm Intelligence, a distributed system of autonomous agents interacting with each other to collectively perform intelligent tasks. This chapter investigates how groups of holonomic flying robots such as quad copters can seek shelter autonomously when encountering bad weather. In this context three alternative autonomous shelter seeking techniques that address the unsolved plateau-problem had to be implemented. The methods were inspired by cockroaches and hunting strategies observed in apex predators. Previous studies on cockroaches have provided facts about their behaviour and resulted in algorithms that can be used for robotic systems. This research builds on these previous studies by formulating three alternative techniques and carrying out a comprehensive analysis of their performance. Simulation results confirm a scalable system where swarms of flying robots successfully find shelters in 3-D environments.