dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaAggregating swarms through morphology handling design contingencies: from the sweet spot to a rich expressivity
| Authors | Jeremy Fersula, Nicolas Bredeche, Olivier Dauchot |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | 2601.07610vv1 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07610 |
| License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
Abstract
Morphological computing, the use of the physical design of a robot to ease the realization of a given task has been proven to be a relevant concept in the context of swarm robotics. Here we demonstrate both experimentally and numerically, that the success of such a strategy may heavily rely on the type of policy adopted by the robots, as well as on the details of the physical design. To do so, we consider a swarm of robots, composed of Kilobots embedded in an exoskeleton, the design of which controls the propensity of the robots to align or anti-align with the direction of the external force they experience. We find experimentally that the contrast that was observed between the two morphologies in the success rate of a simple phototactic task, where the robots were programmed to stop when entering a light region, becomes dramatic, if the robots are not allowed to stop, and can only slow down. Building on a faithful physical model of the self-aligning dynamics of the robots, we perform numerical simulations and demonstrate on one hand that a precise tuning of the self-aligning strength around a sweet spot is required to achieve an efficient phototactic behavior, on the other hand that exploring a range of self-alignment strength allows for a rich expressivity of collective behaviors.
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"abstract": "Morphological computing, the use of the physical design of a robot to ease the realization of a given task has been proven to be a relevant concept in the context of swarm robotics. Here we demonstrate both experimentally and numerically, that the success of such a strategy may heavily rely on the type of policy adopted by the robots, as well as on the details of the physical design. To do so, we consider a swarm of robots, composed of Kilobots embedded in an exoskeleton, the design of which controls the propensity of the robots to align or anti-align with the direction of the external force they experience. We find experimentally that the contrast that was observed between the two morphologies in the success rate of a simple phototactic task, where the robots were programmed to stop when entering a light region, becomes dramatic, if the robots are not allowed to stop, and can only slow down. Building on a faithful physical model of the self-aligning dynamics of the robots, we perform numerical simulations and demonstrate on one hand that a precise tuning of the self-aligning strength around a sweet spot is required to achieve an efficient phototactic behavior, on the other hand that exploring a range of self-alignment strength allows for a rich expressivity of collective behaviors.",
"arxiv_id": "2601.07610",
"authors": [
"Jeremy Fersula",
"Nicolas Bredeche",
"Olivier Dauchot"
],
"categories": [
"cond-mat.soft",
"cs.RO"
],
"license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/",
"title": "Aggregating swarms through morphology handling design contingencies: from the sweet spot to a rich expressivity",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07610",
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