Mathematical Model of Foraging in a Group of Robots: Effect of Interference

In multi-robot applications, such as foraging or collection tasks, interference, which results from competition for space between spatially extended robots, can signi cantly a ect the performance of the group. We present a mathematical model of foraging in a homogeneous multi-robot system, with the goal of understanding quantitatively the e ects of interference. We examine two foraging scenarios: a simpli ed collection task where the robots only collect objects, and a foraging task, where they nd objects and deliver them to some pre-speci ed \home" location. In the rst case we nd that the overall group performance improves as the system size grows; however, interference causes this improvement to be sublinear, and as a result, each robot's individual performance decreases as the group size increases. We also examine the full foraging task where robots collect objects and deliver them home. We nd an optimal group size that maximizes group performance. For larger group sizes, the group performance declines. However, again due to the e ects of interference, the individual robot's performance is a monotonically decreasing function of the group size. We validate both models by comparing their predictions to results of sensor-based simulations in a multi-robot system and nd good agreement between theory and simulations data.