1995 Volume 13 Issue 8 Pages 1138-1144
This paper deals with two fundamental evaluation of characteristics of swarm intelligence in multi-robot system. One is related to swarm intelligence emerged as an ability of space coverage behavior. The other is that as an ability of solving a simple maze. In general, a certain ability emerged only in multi-robot system is called ‘swarm intelligence’ and the multi-robot system is expected to consist of many robots with simple mechanical function and small intelligence. With respect to space coverage behavior generated by many robots equipped with locomotion function and obstacle avoidance intelligence, we investigate the characteristics of space coverage ratio with respect to two parameters; one is population size of multi-robot system and the other is diameter size of a single robot. We show that the effect of population size on the space coverage behavior is greater than the ratio of the population size increase, and that the effect of robot diameter is minor in the case of large population size of multi-robot system. In using the multi-robot system for the task to find the route in simple maze the multi-robot system can solve simple maze problem and we evaluate the ability of accomplishment of the task.
