Realization of flocking behavior based on sound field control

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a control methodology for group agents: what controller would be designed to an individual in order to perform collective motions. We propose a method of using a potential field which is made by sound (Sound field) intentionally in the space. On this method, each robot selects its own movement based on the strength or gradient of the field and is induced indirectly. We design a way to generate a sound field and robot’s behavioral algorithm, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in the real world. Throughout the experiments, we verified that the behavior of robots was well controlled only by the regulation of a sound field.