Real-time control of autonomous mobile robots using virtual pheromones

This paper presents a novel approach on the implementation of the concept of ldquovirtual pheromonesrdquo for use in controlling autonomous mobile robots. Rather than being deployed in the environment, the virtual pheromones are stored in a map of the environment maintained and updated by a ldquopheromone serverrdquo. This map acts like a shared memory for all the agents, by means of a radio communication link between each agent and the pheromone server. No direct communication between agents is required. The pheromone server can be implemented on a regular computer, a handheld device, or an embedded controller carried by a leader robot. The technique described is equally applicable for guiding individual robots and robot swarms. The experiments show that this method allows significant simplification and cost reduction of the autonomous agents. Several possible applications are discussed.