'Educational Development Unit, University of Greenwich'
Abstract
Multiple small mobile robots have been created that were controlled by individual artificial neural networks. Each mobile robot was self-contained and capable of independent actions, as determined by the on-board artificial neural network. Information about the environment was collected from sensors mounted on each individual mobile robot chassis. Different sensors were available that were capable of providing information about different aspects of the environment. Currently there were sensors for detecting and following a black line as well as short range distance sensors for detecting and interacting with objects and other mobile robots. The artificial neural networks on the individual mobile robots were all provided with the same training data and a standard back-propagation training algorithm was used. However the randomised component of training the artificial neural networks did mean that there could have been subtle differences in the responses of individual mobile robots to the same sensor data. This effect was eliminated when needed by using an off-line training process and programming all the mobile robots with the same trained ANN. The small group of mobile robots was used to investigate two simple aspects of swarm behaviour; that of flocking and also of follow-my-leader, which are examples where the swarm appeared to operate with more intelligence than the individual members
