A Formal Framework for Reasoning Emergent Behaviors in Swarm Robotic Systems

Qin Li*, Jinxun Wang, Qiwen Xu, Yanhong Huang, Huibiao Zhu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Swarm robotic system is a complex system comprising a large number of distributed robots. Although a single robot has limited ability of computation and communication, their microscopic behaviors can finally lead to a macroscopic system behavior. Such phenomenon is called emergent behavior which is significantly useful but difficult to engineering due to its indecompositionality over time and scale. In this paper, we propose a formal framework to specify and verify the causality between the macroscopic emergent property and microscopic behaviors of robots. The framework supports hybrid specification of both continuous dynamics of robots and their discrete control programs. A refinement notion is defined in this framework which provides a formal development and verification approach to guide the design of a swarm robotic system satisfying expected emergent properties. We demonstrate the framework on a simple robot swarm consensus scenario.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2015 20th International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, ICECCS 2015
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages150-159
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781467385817
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Jan 2016
Event20th International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, ICECCS 2015 - Gold Coast, Australia
Duration: 9 Dec 201511 Dec 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, ICECCS
Volume2016-January
ISSN (Print)2770-8527
ISSN (Electronic)2770-8535

Conference

Conference20th International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems, ICECCS 2015
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityGold Coast
Period9/12/1511/12/15

Keywords

  • Emergent Behaviors
  • Hybrid Relational Modelling Language
  • Refinement
  • Swarm Robotic Systems

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