A foundation for kilorobotic exploration

A new concept for coordinating large-scale autonomous robot exploration teams having populations in the thousands is introduced along with several illustrative scenarios. Inspired by constructs found within the human immune system, the Immunology-derived Distributed Autonomous Robotics Architecture (IDARA) was developed so that exploratory actions are refined and followed by specific and mediated responses. The foundations of the IDARA model are derived from the immune network model; in particular, interactions derived from the innate immune system are integrated to yield a stronger first-order, all-purpose search strategy. Using this architecture as a foundation, the work develops methods for kilorobotic exploration in dynamic environments. As characterized via computer simulations with robot populations of up to 1,500 robots, IDARA-based exploration proved to be a robust and compact method for largescale multirobot coordination that combines reflexive and deliberative control methods in an opportunistic fashion, mimicking the human immune system.