Swarm Behaviour

For queries about this topic, contact Lenka Pitonakova.

Projects

Bioclimatic Architecture

Seth Bullock (Investigator), Nicholas Hill

This was a review report on bioclimatic architecture and how such architecture may be designed by agent-based models inspired by the building behaviour of insects.

Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling

Hans Fangohr, Ian Hawke, Peter Horak (Investigators), Susanne Ufermann Fangohr, Thorsten Wittemeier, Kieran Selvon, Alvaro Perez-Diaz, David Lusher, Ashley Setter, Emanuele Zappia, Hossam Ragheb, Ryan Pepper, Stephen Gow, Jan Kamenik, Paul Chambers, Robert Entwistle, Rory Brown, Joshua Greenhalgh, James Harrison, Jonathon Waters, Ioannis Begleris, Craig Rafter

The £10million Centre for Doctoral Training was launched in November 2013 and is jointly funded by EPSRC, the University of Southampton, and its partners.

The NGCM brings together world-class simulation modelling research activities from across the University of Southampton and hosts a 4-year doctoral training programme that is the first of its kind in the UK.

Controlling Ant-Based Construction

Seth Bullock (Investigator), Lenka Pitonakova

This paper investigates dynamics of ant nest building and shows that algorithms capable of generating ant-like structures can also be used to create nests, shapes of which are imposed from outside of the system.

Quantifying Collective Construction

Seth Bullock (Investigator), Nicholas Hill

This was an initial investigation into how best to develop quantifying and discriminating measures of both the processes and results of collective construction.

Towards design patterns for robot swarms

Richard Crowder, Seth Bullock (Investigators), Lenka Pitonakova

Swarm robotics is an inter-disciplinary field that seeks to design the behaviour of robots that can cooperate effectively on tasks like search and retrieval, reconnaissance, construction, etc. In this project, we are aiming towards a theoretical understanding of swarm intelligence and the development of design patterns for effective robot swarms.

Understanding the Role of Recruitment in Robot Foraging

Seth Bullock, Richard Crowder (Investigators), Lenka Pitonakova

It is shown that recruitment among foraging robots is useful when resources are hard to find, but that the extra cost associated with such robots is not returned when there are many locations to gather from or simply when the relative gain from using communication is low.