Emergent Dynamic Formation through Optical Interactions in a Robot Swarm

Self‐organized formation is a key direction in swarm robotics. It is still challenging to design local interactions toward desired global formations and even more challenging for dynamic formations in a physical robot swarm system. Herein, a self‐organized method for emergent dynamic circling formation in a robot swarm through optical interactions is proposed. First, this method is quantitatively modeled based on the geometrical relations among robots. This model is further adjusted according to the characteristics of the robot swarm system. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this model, the effects of three key parameters of this model are tested on the size and disorder level of the emergent dynamic circling formation. The experimental results are consistent with the model predictions. Overall, a robot swarm system, in the physical environment, is quantitatively controlled to emerge a dynamic circling formation in this article. This work advances the swarm robotics for quantitatively designing local interactions among robots to reliably emerge dynamic global patterns.