A distributed foraging algorithm based on artificial potential field

Simple collections of agents that perform collec-tively and use distributed control algorithms constitute theinterests of swarm robotics. A key issue to improve systemperformances is to effectively coordinate the team of agents. Wepresent in this paper a multi-agent foraging algorithm calledCooperative-Color Marking Foraging Agents (C-CMFA). It usesthe coordination rules of the S-MASA (Stigmergic Multi-AntSearch Area) algorithm to (i) speed up the search process and (ii)allow agents to build an optimal Artificial Potential Field (APF)simultaneously while exploring. To benefit from multiple robots,we add one cooperation rule in the algorithm to attract largenumber of agents to the found food. This algorithm constitutes adistributed and synchronous version of the c-marking algorithm.Simulation results in comparison with the c-marking one show thesuperiority of C-CMFA in different environment configurations.