Robotic Pheromones: Using Temperature Modulation in Tin Oxide Gas Sensor to Differentiate Swarm's Behaviours

This paper describes an ongoing project to investigate the possibility of using pheromone communication in a robot swarm. The project is inspired by the queen bee pheromone. A queen bee releases pheromones throughout a colony to coordinate the actions of its members. The pheromones have a number of crucial functions in a bee colony, such as keeping together and stabilizing the colony. In the context of a robot swarm, one of the proposed applications for robot pheromones is to allow swarm members to be guided by a robot leader. The robot leader releases different chemicals to elicit different behaviors. In this project, temperature modulation of tin oxide gas sensors have been implemented in order to differentiate different chemicals. This paper provides details of the swarm robots used in the project and their behaviors. The sensors, especially temperature modulation of the tin oxide gas sensors, and the robot control algorithms are described. Results of practical experiments and simulations are also presented