Transferability in the Automatic Off-Line Design of Robot Swarms: From Sim-to-Real to Embodiment and Design-Method Transfer Across Different Platforms

Automatic off-line design is an attractive approach to implementing robot swarms. In this approach, a designer specifies a mission to be accomplished by the swarm, and an optimization process generates suitable control software for the individual robots through computer-based simulations. Most relev...

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Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 9; no. 3; pp. 2758 - 2765
Main Authors: Kegeleirs, Miquel, Ramos, David Garzon, Hasselmann, Ken, Garattoni, Lorenzo, Francesca, Gianpiero, Birattari, Mauro
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.03.2024
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Automatic design
Behavioral sciences
Design methodology
evolutionary robotics
methods and tools for robot system design
Optimization
Platforms
Reinforcement learning
Robot sensing systems
Robots
Software
Swarm robotics
transferability
ISSN:2377-3766, 2377-3766
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Abstract Automatic off-line design is an attractive approach to implementing robot swarms. In this approach, a designer specifies a mission to be accomplished by the swarm, and an optimization process generates suitable control software for the individual robots through computer-based simulations. Most relevant literature has focused on effectively transferring control software from simulation to physical robots. Here, we investigate <list list-type="ordered"><list-item> 1) whether the design methods that generate control software are transferable across robot platforms and </list-item> <list-item> 2) whether control software generated via such methods is itself transferable. </list-item> We experiment with two ground mobile platforms with equivalent functional capabilities. Our measure of transferability is based on the performance drop observed when control software and/or design methods are ported from one platform to another. Results indicate that, while the control software generated via automatic design is possibly transferable, better performance can be achieved when a transferable method is directly applied to the new platform.
AbstractList Automatic off-line design is an attractive approach to implementing robot swarms. In this approach, a designer specifies a mission to be accomplished by the swarm, and an optimization process generates suitable control software for the individual robots through computer-based simulations. Most relevant literature has focused on effectively transferring control software from simulation to physical robots. Here, we investigate 1) whether the design methods that generate control software are transferable across robot platforms and 2) whether control software generated via such methods is itself transferable. We experiment with two ground mobile platforms with equivalent functional capabilities. Our measure of transferability is based on the performance drop observed when control software and/or design methods are ported from one platform to another. Results indicate that, while the control software generated via automatic design is possibly transferable, better performance can be achieved when a transferable method is directly applied to the new platform.
Automatic off-line design is an attractive approach to implementing robot swarms. In this approach, a designer specifies a mission to be accomplished by the swarm, and an optimization process generates suitable control software for the individual robots through computer-based simulations. Most relevant literature has focused on effectively transferring control software from simulation to physical robots. Here, we investigate <list list-type="ordered"><list-item> 1) whether the design methods that generate control software are transferable across robot platforms and </list-item> <list-item> 2) whether control software generated via such methods is itself transferable. </list-item> We experiment with two ground mobile platforms with equivalent functional capabilities. Our measure of transferability is based on the performance drop observed when control software and/or design methods are ported from one platform to another. Results indicate that, while the control software generated via automatic design is possibly transferable, better performance can be achieved when a transferable method is directly applied to the new platform.
Author Ramos, David Garzon
Francesca, Gianpiero
Birattari, Mauro
Kegeleirs, Miquel
Hasselmann, Ken
Garattoni, Lorenzo
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Snippet Automatic off-line design is an attractive approach to implementing robot swarms. In this approach, a designer specifies a mission to be accomplished by the...
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SubjectTerms Automatic design
Behavioral sciences
Design methodology
evolutionary robotics
methods and tools for robot system design
Optimization
Platforms
Reinforcement learning
Robot sensing systems
Robots
Software
Swarm robotics
transferability
Title Transferability in the Automatic Off-Line Design of Robot Swarms: From Sim-to-Real to Embodiment and Design-Method Transfer Across Different Platforms
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