Abstract
Truly autonomous robots, either as single units or in groups will be required to generate and manage their own energy. This paper explores the idea of robot ‘trophallaxis’ whereby one robot can donate an amount of its own internal energy reserve to another. Different strategies for energy transfer are considered within the test simulation scenario of a dust cleaning task. Successful strategies are shown to confer benefits including survivability, task performance and offer the potential to inform design parameters of the storage media.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Holland O (1998) Towards true autonomy. In 29th International Symposium on Robotics (ISR98), International Federation of Robotics, Birmingham, UK
Hölldobler B, Wilson E (1990) The Ants. Springer-Verlag
Ieropoulos I, Greenman J, Melhuish C. (2003) Imitating Metabolism: Energy Autonomy in Biologically Inspired Robotics. In Proceedings of the AISB’ 03, 2nd Int. Symposium on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts, Wales, 191–4
Jackson EA (1991) Perspectives of Nonlinear Dynamics 2, Cambridge Univ. Press
Kelly I, Holland O, and Melhuish C(2000) Slugbot: A Robotic Predator in the Natural World In Proc. of 5th Int. Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics.
Krieger MJB, Billeter JB (2000) The call of duty: Self-organised task allocation in a population of up to twelve mobile robots, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 30,65–84, Elsevier Science
McFarland D, Spier E (1997) Possibly Optimal Decision Making und Self-Sufficiency and Autonomy, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 189 317–331
Melhuish C., Greenman J, Bartholomew K, Ieropoulos I, Horsfield I (2002) Towards Robot Energetic Autonomy using microbial Fuel Cells. submitted to the special edition on Biofuel Cells of the Electrochemica Acta Journal
Pfeifer R(1996) Building Fungus Eaters: Design Principles of Autonomous Agents. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press/Bradford Books, 3–12.
Wilkinson S (2000) Gastrobots-Benefits and Challenges of Microbial Fuel Cells in Food Powered Robot Applications, Autonomous Robots 9, 99–111
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer
About this paper
Cite this paper
Melhuish, C., Kubo, M. (2007). Collective Energy Distribution: Maintaining the Energy Balance in Distributed Autonomous Robots using Trophallaxis. In: Alami, R., Chatila, R., Asama, H. (eds) Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 6. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-35873-2_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-35873-2_27
Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo
Print ISBN: 978-4-431-35869-5
Online ISBN: 978-4-431-35873-2
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)