Collective Construction and
Extended Stigmergy
Justin Werfel
New England Complex Systems Institute
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Date:
Time:
Location: 367 Votey
Abstract
Social insects build large, complex structures, which emerge through the
collective actions of many simple agents acting with no centralized control or
preplanning. This sort of approach to construction has a number of
desirable features, such as considerable parallelism and robustness to
component loss, but is not well understood. I will describe a system in
which autonomous robots assemble user-specified structures out of building blocks.
A fixed set of local control rules is sufficient for a group of robots to
collectively build arbitrary solid structures.
One tool used by insects is stigmergy, the
storing of information in the environment. For instance, the presence of
deposited building material is environmental information which may influence
future deposits. I will demonstrate ways of extending the principle of stigmergy by increasing the capabilities of the building
blocks. Added capabilities increase the availability of nonlocal structural knowledge, thereby increasing
robustness and significantly speeding construction.
(This seminar is
hosted by Computer Science Student
Association.)