Distributed Ant Colony Clustering Using Mobile Agents and Its Effects

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach for controlling mobile multiple robots connected by communication networks. The control mechanism is based on a specific Ant Colony Clustering (ACC) algorithm. In traditional ACC, an ant convey an object, but in our approach, the ant is implemented as a mobile software agent that controls the robot which is corresponding to an object, so that the object moves to the direction ordered by the ant agent. In this time, the process in which an ant searches an object corresponds to a sequence of migrations of the ant agent, which is much more efficient than the search by a mobile robot. In our approach, not only the ant but also the pheromone is implemented as a mobile software agent. The mobile software agents can migrate from one robot to another, so that they can diffuse over robots within their scopes. In addition, since they have their strengths as vector values, they can represent mutual intensification as synthesis of vectors. We have been developing elemental techniques for controlling multiple robots using mobile software agents, and showed effectiveness of applying them to the previous ACC approach which requires a host computer that centrally controls mobile robots. The new ACC approach decentralizes the mobile robot system, and makes the system free from special devices for checking locations.KeywordsMobile RobotMobile AgentHost ComputerMultiple RobotPheromone Agent Pheromone AgentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.