A Swarm of Minimalist Robots Traps a Moving Target Using Optical Interactions

Swarm robots have significant advantages over single robots, capable of cooperating to complete more challenging tasks. Regarding the problem of trapping dynamic targets by robot swarms in unknown environments, previous methods typically required robots to carry sensors and positioning devices, and to be capable of perceiving the position information of neighbors within a limited range. This paper proposes a trapping method suitable for minimalist robots, which has minimal number of sensor. Specifically, this method can effectively prevent the target from escaping even when robots have no access to relative position information of the target. We introduce “fatness” as a metric to evaluate trapping performance, establish simulation models to analyze the influence of various factors on trapping formation, and conduct physical trapping experiments using Morphobots to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.