Experimental Implementation of Collective Motion based on Swarm Robotic Control

Collective behavior is now observed commonly in animal groups, while there is still a giant gap between theoretical research and implementation on the on real swarm robotic systems. Collective motion is a kind of consensus behavior in which robots show self-organized aggregation and alignment. Different from the shape formation of a swarm of robots in a fixed speed, the collective motion requires each robot to change its both linear and angular speed spontaneously. We adapt a decentralized algorithm which has the similar interaction method with animal group to the collective motion of swarm robotic control, considering the physical limits of the robots. Using e-puck robots, we show that the algorithm can make the robots aggregate and align with each other automatically on the condition of a bounded circle scenario.