Question: How would you get the thousands of robots to communicate with eachother

Siobhan Duncan answered on 6 Mar 2017:

---

Dear ZforZoe,

Thank you for your question, this is actually what my PhD is about!

I will try and keep this short, because I could talk about this for days 🙂

In nature, animals in the swarm use two different methods of communication.

There is a visual based communication and a chemical based one.

The chemical based method of communication is where animals release a certain chemical, such as a pheromone, into the environment. This chemical is then sensed by other animals and either the type of chemical, or the amount of this chemical, will mean something.

For example, as ants walk around they will leave a trail of pheromones on the ground. The amount of chemical on the ground, let’s other ants know how many ants have been here recently.

Another example, is each ant is covered in a different carbon-based chemical. This chemical matches the ant’s job within the swarm. For example, a cleaning ant, or a builder ant, and other’s ants will know what job it has just by smelling it.

The vision based method is where animals will change something in the environment and this change means something to other animals.

For example, if you are in a public place and you leave your jacket on your chair whilst you get up to do something. This jacket on the chair let’s other people know that someone is sitting on that chair, without needing to ask. Well animals behave in similar ways too.

Another example are wasps who build nests, they will place their building block on the new nest in a certain location because of what has already been built. This is how very simple insects are able to build very complex structures, without being able to directly speak to each other.

These are the types of communications that I am very interested in. They are known as indirect communication as the animals don’t exchange language, but change things around them, such as smells, to communicate with other animals.

However because we are humans who have language and the ability to read/write, we are able to take things further.

For example, if your fridge was low on milk, you could write a note on the fridge ‘Out of milk’. This notes communicates to all others who come in and out of the kitchen, that there is no milk left.

So you have still communicated indirectly, because you didn’t tell anyone that there was no milk, but instead changed the environment so that anyone who walked in would know. However you used language, rather than a chemical marker.

What I am trying to do with my research, is figure out how we can combine human communication with the vision and chemical based communications found in nature.

This is a very short introduction as to how swarms might communicate, please ask me more questions if I have not been clear, or if this has created more questions 🙂

Thanks
Siobhan