Chemotaxis Based Virtual Fence for Swarm Robots in Unbounded Environments

Abstract

This paper presents a novel swarm robotics application of chemotaxis behaviour observed in microorganisms. This approach was used to cause exploration robots to return to a work area around the swarm’s nest within a boundless environment. We investigate the performance of our algorithm through extensive simulation studies and hardware validation. Results show that the chemotaxis approach is effective for keeping the swarm close to both stationary and moving nests. Performance comparison of these results with the unrealistic case where a boundary wall was used to keep the swarm within a target search area showed that our chemotaxis approach produced competitive results.