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An empirical characterization of ODE models of swarm behaviors in common foraging scenarios

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Abstract

There is a large class of real-world problems, such as warehouse transport, at different scales, swarm densities, etc., that can be characterized as Central Place Foraging Problems (CPFPs). We contribute to swarm engineering by designing an Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) model that strives to capture the underlying behavioral dynamics of the CPFP in these application areas. Our simulation results show that a hybrid ODE modeling approach combining analytic parameter calculations and post-hoc (i.e., after running experiments) parameter fitting can be just as effective as a purely post-hoc approach to computing parameters via simulations, while requiring less tuning and iterative refinement. This makes it easier to design systems with provable bounds on behavior. Additionally, the resulting model parameters are more understandable because their values can be traced back to problem features, such as system size, robot control algorithm, etc. Finally, we perform real-robot experiments to further understand the limits of our model from an engineering standpoint.

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Notes

  1. Our is code open-source at https://github.com/jharwell/fordyca.

  2. Supplementary videos for both simulated and real-robot experiments can be found at https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~harwe006/showcase/auro-2022-extra/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, 200 Union St SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    John Harwell, Angel Sylvester & Maria Gini

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  1. John Harwell
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  2. Angel Sylvester
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  3. Maria Gini
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Correspondence to John Harwell.

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Partial financial support for this work was provided by the MnDRIVE initiative, the Minnesota Robotics Institute, and the University of Minnesota Informatics Institute. The Minnesota Supercomputing Institute provided computing resources. No other competing interests exist.

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Harwell, J., Sylvester, A. & Gini, M. An empirical characterization of ODE models of swarm behaviors in common foraging scenarios. Auton Robot 47, 963–977 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-023-10121-9

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