Multiple-Place Swarm Foraging with Dynamic Robot Chains

The goal of foraging robot swarms is to search and deliver resources to a specific central collection zone quickly. In the previously proposed multiple-place foraging algorithm with dynamic depots, foraging performance decreases as search areas and swarm sizes increase: depots need to travel long distances to deliver resources to the center, and more robots produce more congestion on their journeys. We propose a novel extension to the multiple-place foraging in which multiple robot chains are deployed dynamically. Each robot chain connects a foraging location to the central collection zone. Instead of delivering resources by a single robot, resources are passed on robot chains from foraging locations to the center directly such that congestion near the central collection zone can be avoided. Dynamic robot chains can also relocate themselves to get closer to the resources while avoiding obstacles. We simulate our robot swarms in the robot simulator ARGoS. Our experiments show that robots using the MPFA with dynamic chains outperform the MPFA with dynamic depots and have less congestion.