Swarm System for Resource Location with Non Explicitly Connected Agents

Nowadays, there are several applications that use swarm robotics for solving research tasks and resource exploitation. Most of these applications are based on complex agents that require explicit communication between them. These systems are difficult to introduce in certain environments because of these features, where agents can not always communicate between them and where a large swarm would be necessary. This paper presents a swarm system for collective resource exploitation. The main features of the agents of this system are their simplicity and that they do not communicate with each other in explicit way. A microscopic model that shows the individual performance of these agents has been proposed, and a macroscopic model that describes the overall swarm system has been provided. Several tests, that show the convergence of the swarm towards the best resource in an unknown environment, have been analyzed. These tests have been carried out in different environments with multiple resources.