Instinctive behaviors and personalities in societies of cellular robots

A description is presented of the social organization of societies of cellular mobile units featuring instinctive behavior. Each robotic unit has its own personality and lives independently from the others. Useful tasks are carried out through collaboration rather than by individual effort. The behavior of each unit derives from a subsumption-like control structure, which emphasizes the roles of innate personality, external stimuli, and communication. A number of different robotic personalities are described and techniques of implementing them in real robot units are outlined. The implementation of instinctive behavior is described for the case of a robotic vehicle system (ROBBIE)