Robohub.org
 

The Year of CoCoRo Video #40/52: Adaptive layers water column


by
06 October 2015



share this:
Cocoro40

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CooRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. This week’s video shows the mechanisms used in the “social inhibition algorithm” in more detail and our experiments with swarms of robots in a vertical aquarium. 

Last week we introduced the “social inhibition algorithm” we developed for our CoCoRo robot swarm. This is an algorithm for regulating division of labour, inspired by the self-organized regulation of physiological age in honeybee colonies.

The week the robots regulate an internal variable, X, by interacting with other robots, and split the swarm into three cohorts, allocating themselves to different depths in the aquarium. We added and removed robots. Their regulation of the internal variable leads to an automatic rearrangement of the swarm, so that there are always an equal number of robots at each depth.

We also added sources of interest: special robots or external lights, at different depth layers, and the swarm rearranges in a way that more robots are attracted to particularly interesting depths.

The algorithm shown here is promising due to its ability to automatically rearrange the robots to meet different demands, based only on local interactions. This makes it attractive for large scale applications where several sub-groups of the swarm need to act at different depth levels performing different tasks.



tags: , , , , ,


Thomas Schmickl is an Associate Professor at Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria, and a lecturer at the University for Applied Sciences in St. Pölten, Austria.
Thomas Schmickl is an Associate Professor at Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria, and a lecturer at the University for Applied Sciences in St. Pölten, Austria.





Related posts :



Interview with Zahra Ghorrati: developing frameworks for human activity recognition using wearable sensors

and   08 Oct 2025
Zahra tells us more about her research on wearable technology.

Women in robotics you need to know about 2025

  06 Oct 2025
This global list celebrates women's impact across the robotics ecosystem and globe.

Robot Talk Episode 127 – Robots exploring other planets, with Frances Zhu

  03 Oct 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Frances Zhu from the Colorado School of Mines about intelligent robotic systems for space exploration.

Rethinking how robots move: Light and AI drive precise motion in soft robotic arm

  01 Oct 2025
Researchers at Rice University have developed a soft robotic arm capable of performing complex tasks.

RoboCup Logistics League: an interview with Alexander Ferrein, Till Hofmann and Wataru Uemura

and   25 Sep 2025
Find out more about the RoboCup league focused on production logistics and the planning.

Drones and Droids: a co-operative strategy game

  22 Sep 2025
Scottish Association for Marine Science is running a crowdfunding campaign for educational card game.

Call for AAAI educational AI videos

  22 Sep 2025
Submit your contributions by 30 November 2025.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence