Collective cognition: A case study of evolutionary swarm robotics in the collective foraging problem with poison

Swarm robotics is a field of research in which multiple robots coordinate behaviors to solve cognitive problems that exceed individual ability. This paper reports a case study of swarm robotics in a collective cognition task where robots have to cooperatively forage for foods of specific size and bring them back to the nest. The sensory ability of each robot is limited to local and is insufficient to distinguish food's size. We succeeded in developing an artificial neural network controller through the use of evolutionary swarm robotics approach. Computer simulation results show that the robotic swarm exhibits collective cognition to achieve the given task.