DYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION OF A HETEROGENEOUS SWARM OF ROBOTS

The control mechanisms of swarms of cooperating robots have been studied for some time now, but usually assuming homogeneous swarms. This paper presents a control al-gorithm for a heterogeneous swarm of cooperating robots based on a modification of the ant colony optimization (ACO) method. We consider the possibility of a partially disabled robot, we analyze the effect it would have on a het-erogeneous swarm of robots, and we discuss how to work around the disability. We examine the effectivness of this control algorithm through a simulation study. For this pur-pose, a biologically inspired strategy is used for the move-ment of the robots