SWARM INTELLIGENCE WHAT IS SWARM INTELLIGENCE Swarm Intelligence

SWARM INTELLIGENCE

WHAT IS SWARM INTELLIGENCE? Swarm Intelligence is a field of Computer Science It is a form of Artificial Intelligence Some animals, mostly insects, like ants or bees, form large colonies. These colonies are made of many animals that communicate with each other. Each animal is relatively simple, but by working together with other animals it is able to solve complex tasks. Quoted from http: //wiki. kidzsearch. com/wiki/Swarm_intelligence

SWARM INTELLIGENCE is a kind of Artificial Intelligence that tries to make a number of robots behave in a similar way to swarms of social insects. In a non-robotics sense, swarm intelligence is “the collective behaviour of a group of animals, esp social insects such as ants, bees, and termites, that are each following very basic rules”. And in a robotics sense, it is “an artificialintelligence approach to problem solving using algorithms based on the self-organized collective behaviour of social insects”.

A GOOD SUMMARY COULD BE “One Million Heads, One Beautiful Mind” http: //www. techferry. com/articles/swarm-intelligence. html

WHAT SWARM BEHAVIORS ARE IMPORTANT? Insect swarms are robust – it doesn’t matter if some insects die, the others simply take over They are flexible – if the environment changes, the behaviors can change in response They are scalable – if the task changes size, insects can be added or removed

WHAT INSECT BEHAVIOR IS IMPORTANT? Some insect behaviors scientists are studying: A. Feeding behavior Finding food Stalking food B. Flight behavior Avoid being caught – move, confuse and/or startle predator Hiding (avoid being in a lighted area) Hugging a wall while moving C. Host-finding behavior Acting like a tick or other parasite, trying to find a host D. Migration and dispersal behavior Following a repeatable course E. Fight behavior Attack when provoked Attack if cornered F. Social behavior Communicating presence Marking territory

EMERGENT Swarm intelligence is an emergent behavior – A very simple instruction ends up with a very different-looking result. This is called ‘emergence’.

WHY DO ROBOTICISTS STUDY INSECTS? Let’s look at these roboticists from Harvard. (it’s a long video, we will skim through some of it. )

HAN WANG M. SC PROJECT Do you think the algorithm used here was simple or complicated? What do you think the algorithm for the ants might have been? So—if the algorithm was ‘walk until you find food, then come back’, what did the end result look like? Is that emergence?

GO TO YOUR GOOGLE DRIVE, AND DRAG “SWARM INTELLIGENCE” FROM ‘SHARED WITH ME’ TO YOUR AI FOLDER. Question 1. Predict some ways in which swarms of robots could be useful to people.

SWARM ROBOTS IN WAREHOUSES We have looked at Amazon’s Kiva warehouse robots before. Their software talks to programs on the warehouse server, and also to …………. programs on PCs at the packing stations. They act independently, but …………. share their locations with the warehouse server, which helps them to …………. improve the way they navigate. We have also seen a video of Ocado’s warehouse robots. Here is more information about how they work. These are robots behaving like swarms.

QUESTION 2 – ON YOUR GOOGLE DOC In what ways do you think these warehouse robots are like a swarm of insects?

AT HARVARD, SOME SCIENTISTS ARE LOOKING AT BRAINLESS BRISTLEBOTS, AND THEY SEE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS AS THOUGH THEY ARE COOPERATING.

MIT IS WORKING ON SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE INTELLIGENT: Small Cubes that self-assemble’ Look at the article.

SWARMBOTS PULLING A CHILD What signal did the swarmbots send? What do you think the algorithm could have been?

SWARMBOTS PULLING A HEAVY OBJECT What signal did the swarmbots send? What do you think the algorithm could have been?

QUESTION 3 In the robot swarms we have looked at, all the robots were like each other. Do you think this is like swarms in nature or not? Explain.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF SWARM ROBOT Nano Quadrotors with artificial swarm intelligence 11 Quadricopters doing something amazing Now, those robots were programmed separately to do different things. Look at this swarm.

You notice that the second set of robots are doing different things from each other. Does this count as swarm robotics?

Swarm robots that use termite techniques to build.

Let’s look at some Swarm Robots cooperating with an AR drone. As interesting as the communication is, it's the applications that really make this video worth watching. Since the ground robots can't see very far, they rely on the quadrotor to scout ahead and estimate the parameters of upcoming obstacles. Then, the quadrotor instructs the swarm on the ground how to team up to best overcome those obstacles. With the hill, for example, the quadrotor can use stereo imagery to compute how steep it is, run an onboard simulation to see how many ground robots will have to team up to make it over, and then give instruction and direction to the robots below. Very clever.

Now we will watch Swarmanoid, the Movie

QUESTION 4 A What are the functions of the different types of robots you saw in this movie.

QUESTION 4 B Give reasons why you think that together, they are or are not a swarm.

SO, CAN SWARM ROBOTS BE DIFFERENT? In one source, the author explained that in the early days of swarm robotics, the robots were all expected to be similar. Nowadays, the definition is expanding, and different types of robots can make a swarm.

SHOULD WE HAVE MORE SWARMS? Remember the Philae lander, which touched down on a comet only to fail at its attempt to drill into the surface and collect samples. What if we had done that with five or 10 smaller, cheaper probes. Not only would the risk of a total failure be much lower, you could collect data from different places. The US military has come to much the same conclusion with respect to combat missions. They are focusing a lot of attention on swarms: – unmanned aerial vehicles, in military parlance – like the navy’s Locust (Low. Cost UAV Swarming Technology).