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Colias-Φ: An Autonomous Micro Robot for Artificial Pheromone Communication

Farshad Arvin 1, Shigang Yue 1, and Caihua Xiong 2
1. Computational Intelligence Laboratory (CIL), School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
2. School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

Abstract—Ants pheromone communication is an efficient mechanism which took inspiration from nature. It has been used in various artificial intelligence and multi robotics researches. This paper presents the development of an autonomous micro robot to be used in swarm robotic researches especially in pheromone based communication systems. The robot is an extended version of Colias micro robot with capability of decoding and following artificial pheromone trails. We utilize a low-cost experimental setup to implement pheromone-based scenarios using a flat LCD screen and a USB camera. The results of the performed experiments with group of robots demonstrated the feasibility of Colias-Φ to be used in pheromone based experiments.

Index Termsautonomous, swarm robotics, micro robot, pheromone communication

Cite: Farshad Arvin, Shigang Yue, and Caihua Xiong, "Colias-Φ: An Autonomous Micro Robot for Artificial Pheromone Communication," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol.4, No. 4, pp. 349-353, October 2015. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.4.4.349-353