Abstract
Automatic off-line design is an attractive approach to implementing robot swarms. In this approach, a designer specifies a mission for the swarm, and an optimization process generates suitable control software for the individual robots through computer-based simulations. Most relevant literature has focused on effectively transferring control software from simulation to physical robots. For the first time, we investigate (i) whether control software generated via automatic design is transferable across robot platforms and (ii) whether the design methods that generate such control software are themselves transferable. We experiment with two ground mobile platforms with equivalent capabilities. Our measure of transferability is based on the performance drop observed when control software and/or design methods are ported from one platform to another. Results indicate that while the control software generated via automatic design is transferable in some cases, better performance can be achieved when a transferable method is directly applied to the new platform.
Abstract (translated)
自动线上设计是一种实施机器人群体的方法，这种方法要求设计师指定群体的任务，并通过计算机模拟生成适合每个机器人的控制软件。大多数相关文献都关注如何有效地将控制软件从模拟转移到物理机器人上。这是首次研究(i)自动设计生成的控制软件是否可以跨机器人平台转移，以及(ii)生成这种控制软件的设计方法是否可以转移。我们使用了具有同等能力的两种地面移动平台。我们的转移性衡量基于在从一个平台转移到另一个平台上时观察到的性能下降。结果表明，虽然自动设计生成的控制软件在某些情况下可以转移，但将转移方法直接应用于新平台上可以实现更好的性能。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.16126
