Swarm Robotics from Biology to Robotics

In nature, it is possible to observe a cooperative behaviour in all animals, since, according to Charles Darwin’s theory, every being, from ants to human beings, form groups in which most individuals work for the common good. However, although study of dozens of social species has been done for a century, details of how and why cooperation evolved remain to be worked out. Actually, cooperative behaviour has been studied from different points of view. For instance evolutionary biologists and animal behaviour researchers look for the genetic basis and molecular drivers of this kind of behaviours, as well as the physiological, environmental, and behavioural impetus for sociality; while neuroscientists discover key correlations between brain chemicals and social strategies. From a more mathematical point of view, economics have developed a modelling approach, based on game theory, to quantify cooperation and predict behavioural outcomes under different circumstances. Although game theory has helped to reveal an apparently innate desire for fairness, developed models are still imperfect. Furthermore, social insect behaviour, from a biological point of view, might be emulated by a micro-robot colony and, in that way, analysis of a tremendous amount of insect trajectories and manual event counting is replaced by tracking several miniature robots on a desktop table.