Casualty-based cooperation in swarm robots

This paper presents a cooperation of swarm robots based on casualty. The robots are initially placed in a field with a ditch which single robot cannot get across. All robots aim for a common destination. An algorithm for each robot is so simple that some of them are pushed out towards the ditch. The sacrificed robots are left as a part of a bridge. Completed bridge enables the rest to go across the ditch. This phenomenon is considered as an unintentional cooperation. We first show fundamental characteristics of this system investigated by computer simulation. Making mathematical model, we analyze the results obtained by the simulation. We also make small scale robot team and confirm their behavior by experiment.