Division of Labour in Self-Organised Groups

• Presented at: The 10th Int. Conf. on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB'08), Osaka, Japan
• Published in: Proc. of the 10th Int. Conf. on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, p. 426-436
• Series: Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 5040
• Berlin, Germany: Springer Verlag, 2008

In social insect colonies, many tasks are performed by higher-order entities, such as groups and teams whose task solving capacities transcend those of the individual participants. In this paper, we investigate the emergence of such higher-order entities using a colony of up to 12 physical robots. We report on an experimental study in which the robots engage in a range of different activities, including exploration, path formation, recruitment, self-assembly and group transport. Once the robots start interacting with each other and with their environment, they self-organise into teams in which distinct roles are performed concurrently. The system displays a dynamical hierarchy of teamwork, the cooperating elements of which comprise higher-order entities. The study shows that teamwork requires neither individual recognition nor inter-individual differences, and as such might contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of such characteristics for the division of labour in social insects.

Keywords: cooperation ; division of labour ; foraging ; group transport ; hierarchy ; path formation ; self-organisation ; swarm ; robotics ; teamwork ; [MOBOTS]

Reference

• LSRO-CONF-2008-036
• doi:10.1007/978-3-540-69134-1_42
• View record in Web of Science

Record created on 2008-03-29, modified on 2012-03-20