Wolf Pack's Role Matching Labor Division Model for Dynamic Task Allocation of Swarm Robotics

Wolf Pack's Role Matching Labor Division Model for Dynamic Task Allocation of Swarm Robotics

Jinqiang Hu, Renjun Zhan, Husheng Wu, Yongli Li
Copyright: © 2022 |Pages: 26
DOI: 10.4018/IJSIR.310063
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Abstract

First, through in-depth analysis of the diversified collective behaviors in wolf pack, this study summarizes four remarkable features of wolf pack's labor division. Second, the wolf pack's role-task matching labor division mechanism is investigated, namely the individual wolves perform specific tasks that match their respective roles, and then a novel role matching labor division model is proposed. Finally, the performances of RMM are tested and evaluated with two swarm robotics task allocation scenarios. It is proved that RMM has higher solving efficiency and faster calculation speed for the concerned problem than the compared approach. Moreover, the proposed model shows advantages in the task allocation balance, robustness, and real time, especially in the dynamic response capability to the complex and changing environments.
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1 Introduction

Swarm intelligence (SI), emerging from the collective behaviors of social biological groups, has become an important inspiration source for the research of complex multi-agent system (MAS) and corresponding distributed optimization and coordination strategies (Tang et al., 2021; Bonabeau et al., 2000). Labor division (Robinson, 1992) is one of the most remarkable characteristics of swarm intelligence, which widely exists in social biological groups such as ant colony, bee colony and wolf pack. By the rational division of labor and close cooperation among individuals, groups can accomplish diverse and complex tasks efficiently, such as hunting, enemy defense, nesting, rearing cubs, and migration. Labor division can be described as: Individuals with differences in size, age or role are generally dedicated to the specific subsets of group task. When the external environment changes or the disturbance within the group occurs, the group can adjust the division of individual tasks or the populations of subgroups performing different subtasks adaptively and dynamically, so that all task subsets can be efficiently executed in parallel. Finally, it forms a stable state in which individual workloads are balanced and group task demand is satisfied (Wu et al., 2021). The labor division based on the differences of individual sizes subjects to the morphological polyethism in biology, where the individual’s task depond on its body size. A typical representative of morphological polyethism is Pheidole ant colony (Mertl and Traniello, 2009), the small and medium-sized worker ants are mainly responsible for nursing and foraging, while the larger ones responsible for defending and storing food. The labor division based on the differences of individual ages subjects to the temporal polyethism, where individuals differed in age groups undertake different tasks, such as the young bees work in the nest while the older bees work outside the nest (Ament, 2010). The labor division of wolf pack is based on the differences of individual roles (Mech, 1999), namely, individuals playing specific roles in the collective behaviors perform the involved tasks which match their roles. For example, in the cooperative hunting behavior, the wolf pack will spontaneously regroup into subgroups marked by roles, such as the leader wolves, the scout wolves, the chasing wolves and the besieging wolves. Moreover, wolves can interconvert their roles flexibly to adjust the task allocation with the hunting process.

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