Wall Climbing Emergent Behavior in a Swarm of Real-World Miniature Autonomous Blimps

Tristan Schuler, Cameron Kabacinski, Daniel Lofaro, Dhawal Bhanderi, Jennifer Nguyen, Donald Sofge

2023

Abstract

Emergent behaviors in swarms can arise when agents with simple behavioral rules produce complex group dynamics. In this work we develop both a physics-based simulation environment as well as a real-world testbed for indoor miniature autonomous blimps to analyze sensor-driven emergent behavior. During the flight experiments, the blimps had global localization from an indoor motion capture system to follow waypoints but used downward facing ultrasonic ping sensors for local-frame altitude control. After introducing a wall to the environment and commanding the swarm to the other side of the unknown obstacle, a wall climbing emergent behavior arose where the swarm agents climbed over each other as well as the wall to reach the goal. We demonstrate how modifying the sensor characteristics between trials and changing the swarm size affects this emergent behavior in both simulation and with real-world blimps, and compare the results.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Schuler T., Kabacinski C., Lofaro D., Bhanderi D., Nguyen J. and Sofge D. (2023). Wall Climbing Emergent Behavior in a Swarm of Real-World Miniature Autonomous Blimps. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART, ISBN 978-989-758-623-1, pages 225-232. DOI: 10.5220/0011636200003393

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart23,
author={Tristan Schuler and Cameron Kabacinski and Daniel Lofaro and Dhawal Bhanderi and Jennifer Nguyen and Donald Sofge},
title={Wall Climbing Emergent Behavior in a Swarm of Real-World Miniature Autonomous Blimps},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART,},
year={2023},
pages={225-232},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0011636200003393},
isbn={978-989-758-623-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART,
TI - Wall Climbing Emergent Behavior in a Swarm of Real-World Miniature Autonomous Blimps
SN - 978-989-758-623-1
AU - Schuler T.
AU - Kabacinski C.
AU - Lofaro D.
AU - Bhanderi D.
AU - Nguyen J.
AU - Sofge D.
PY - 2023
SP - 225
EP - 232
DO - 10.5220/0011636200003393