Development of an immunology-based multi-robot coordination algorithm for exploration and mapping domains

This paper presents a new concept called the Immunology-derived Distributed Autonomous Robotics Architecture (IDARA) for the manipulation of "kilorobots" (large multi-robot colonies) modeled on the actions of the human immune system. The paper presents the development of the IDARA algorithms for the control and coordination of kilorobots for robot exploration tasks in four mapping scenarios. As characterized via computer simulations with robot populations of up to 1,500, IDARA-based exploration proved to be an efficient, robust, and compact method for large-scale multirobot control that combines the speed of reflexive methods with the precision of deliberative control.