Digital Pheromones for Coordination of Unmanned Vehicles

One of the parade examples of agent coordination through a shared environment is the use of chemical markers, or pheromones, for path planning in insect colonies. We have developed a digital analog of this mechanism that is well suited to problems such as the control of unmanned robotic vehicles, and extended it in novel ways to provide a rich set of tools for robotic control. We introduce the approach, describe the mechanisms we have developed, and summarize the technology’s performance in a series of scenarios reflecting military command and control.