Analysis of Spatially Limited Local Communication for Multi-Robot Foraging

This work presents a biologically inspired communication model for foraging swarms of cooperative mobile robots. In contrast to conventional, unrestricted local communication the exchange of messages is here spatially restricted to a nest-like area. The performance of the presented communication concept is evaluated using simulation and comparison to common forms of communication. An implementation on hardware robots allows to determine influences from the real world on the model. Results show that spatial limitation of communication to a single nest area can still speed up the performance of foraging swarms whereas further increasing the quantity of conventional local communication is less effective for the process of foraging.