The Rod-Bearing Problem: A Cooperative Autonomous Robotics Application Based on Artificial Idiotypic Immune Networks

There are many hazardous situations where multi-robots could cooperate to perform rescue operations. For example, lately, the Fukishima reactor disaster mandated manipulation of dangerous materials. A hypothetical situation was selected in this paper where a rod has to be carried by two autonomous mobile robots until they deliver it to a safe zone to avoid endangering humans. To control this cooperative rescue operation, there are many techniques. A few biologically inspired techniques have been implemented in robotics control. The biological inspiration utilized in this research is based on Artificial Immune Systems (AIS), where an Idiotopic Artificial Immune Network (IAIN) is used to control the cooperation between robots. It was found that the two robots could learn how to cooperate in an unknown environment and eventually generate their own knowledge about the whole experiment for later use in similar situations. As well, AIS proved worthy as it facilitated communication among IAIN components.