Emergence of specialized Collective Behaviors in Evolving Heterogeneous Swarms

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: van Diggelen, Fuda, De Carlo, Matteo, Cambier, Nicolas, Ferrante, Eliseo, Eiben, A. E.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author van Diggelen, Fuda
De Carlo, Matteo
Cambier, Nicolas
Ferrante, Eliseo
Eiben, A. E.
author_facet van Diggelen, Fuda
De Carlo, Matteo
Cambier, Nicolas
Ferrante, Eliseo
Eiben, A. E.
contents Natural groups of animals, such as swarms of social insects, exhibit astonishing degrees of task specialization, useful to address complex tasks and to survive. This is supported by phenotypic plasticity: individuals sharing the same genotype that is expressed differently for different classes of individuals, each specializing in one task. In this work, we evolve a swarm of simulated robots with phenotypic plasticity to study the emergence of specialized collective behavior during an emergent perception task. Phenotypic plasticity is realized in the form of heterogeneity of behavior by dividing the genotype into two components, with one different neural network controller associated to each component. The whole genotype, expressing the behavior of the whole group through the two components, is subject to evolution with a single fitness function. We analyse the obtained behaviors and use the insights provided by these results to design an online regulatory mechanism. Our experiments show three main findings: 1) The sub-groups evolve distinct emergent behaviors. 2) The effectiveness of the whole swarm depends on the interaction between the two sub-groups, leading to a more robust performance than with singular sub-group behavior. 3) The online regulatory mechanism enhances overall performance and scalability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_04763
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Emergence of specialized Collective Behaviors in Evolving Heterogeneous Swarms
van Diggelen, Fuda
De Carlo, Matteo
Cambier, Nicolas
Ferrante, Eliseo
Eiben, A. E.
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Natural groups of animals, such as swarms of social insects, exhibit astonishing degrees of task specialization, useful to address complex tasks and to survive. This is supported by phenotypic plasticity: individuals sharing the same genotype that is expressed differently for different classes of individuals, each specializing in one task. In this work, we evolve a swarm of simulated robots with phenotypic plasticity to study the emergence of specialized collective behavior during an emergent perception task. Phenotypic plasticity is realized in the form of heterogeneity of behavior by dividing the genotype into two components, with one different neural network controller associated to each component. The whole genotype, expressing the behavior of the whole group through the two components, is subject to evolution with a single fitness function. We analyse the obtained behaviors and use the insights provided by these results to design an online regulatory mechanism. Our experiments show three main findings: 1) The sub-groups evolve distinct emergent behaviors. 2) The effectiveness of the whole swarm depends on the interaction between the two sub-groups, leading to a more robust performance than with singular sub-group behavior. 3) The online regulatory mechanism enhances overall performance and scalability.
title Emergence of specialized Collective Behaviors in Evolving Heterogeneous Swarms
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04763