Target following approach for self-organized swarms based on color information

In many robotic applications more than one robot is needed to complete a given task. It is not always necessary and possible for every swarm member to aware of the tracked objects position or speed. In this paper we propose a control approach for tracking a moving a target by a self-organizing swarm. We combine the swarm control strategies with color based tracking to solve the task. The proposed method allows swarm members in favorable positions, that are virtual leaders, to follow the tracked object while the rest of the swarm follows the informed leaders. The swarm members use color sensors to detect the target robot. The color information is converted to an attractive force which drives the swarm member towards the target. The experiments were performed using a swarm of mobile robots in the V-REP simulation environment to show the applicability of the proposed control algorithm.