Generation of Virtual Reality Environments in which to Evaluate Swarm Adherence to Prescribed Control Rules

This paper shares experiences in the development and generation of Virtual Reality Environments in which to evaluate swarm adherence to prescribed control rules. It describes the attributes of locations in the environments which allow swarms of robotic devices to cooperatively converge on desired emergent behaviour. In addition, the work describes how robotic devices perceive the meanings of the information held on the proposed locations of the virtual environments. Results indicate that extra care should be taken when designing simulated environments in order to guarantee usefulness of those environments to robotic devices in swarms. The environments should possess features which would further inform the robotic devices of the geometry and map of the simulated environments. In addition, good designs are the hopes to the fourth industrial revolution. Without proper design of the testbeds, the envisioned usefulness of robotics to the fourth industrial revolution would fail.