Design and analysis of cooperative and non cooperative stigmergy-based models for foraging

Swarm robotics is focused on implementation ofsystems which are composed of multiple simple robots ratherthan one single complex robot. The challenge is to developa group of robots with simple perception and communicationcapabilities in order to complete a task in a collective anddistributed manner without central leader. In this paper, wepresent cooperative and non cooperative models for foragingthat exploit stigmergy in the context of the classical ArmyAnt Raid model. Such models use the S-MASA algorithm thatproduces a gradual search around the nest which provides lesstime for locating closest food and provides close-to-optimal pathsusing only the pheromone concentration. The proposed modelshave been evaluated under simulation with respect to modelsbased on the reference c-marking algorithm. The obtained resultsshow that the proposed models, specifically the cooperative oneoutperforms the c-marking based models both in obstacle-freeand obstacle environments.