Muhammad T. Khan and Clarence W. de Silva
Artificial immune system, multi-robot coordination, fault tolerance, multi-robot cooperation
The human immune system is a network of cells, tissues, and organs that defends the body against pathogens. The system is highly distributed and cooperative, which works in a coordinated manner to eliminate pathogens. This paper presents a framework based on an artificial immune system (AIS) for a cooperative multi-robot system (MRS) that is fully autonomous and fault tolerant. The present MRS consists of a team of mobile robots that communicate, coordinate and cooperate with each other to achieve a global goal, while resolving conflicts and accommodating full and partial failures in the robots. In this framework, the system autonomously chooses the appropriate number of robots required for carrying out the global task in an unknown and unpredictable environment. The developed approach of coordination and cooperation among robots is based on Jerne’s idiotypic network theory and the structure of an antibody in the human immune system. The feasibility of the scheme is demonstrated by implementing the approach on a team of mobile robots that cooperatively transport an object to a goal location.
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