TYOC#39/52: Lily AdaptiveLayers pool
The Year of CoCoRo 39/52: This video shows a novel swarm algorithm called "social inhibition algorithm". It is inspired by honeybees which use mechanisms to regulate division of labour by socially inhibiting physiological age progression: The more bees of an older age group meet other younger bees, the slower these younger bees will progress in their age-depending work schedule. And the more often younger bees meet older bees the faster these older bees will progress, thus they will age faster physiologically. This way the physiological age is self-regulated in the honeybee colony, ultimately also regulating the division of labour this way. We implemented these mechanisms into our robot swarm as follows: Each robot holds a variable X representing the "physiological age" of the robot. If two robots meet, these values can change a bit, depending on the robots past experiences. Over time all robots will have quite different values of X. The work to be performed, or in our case here the depth at which the robot dives, is based on its value of X. If robots are removed or added in specific depths, the contact rates of some robots will change, in turn also their values of X will change, ultimately re-arranging the whole swarm in a homeostatic way. By casting lights at some robots we increase the "work load demand" at this depth layer and automatically more robots are recruited to that layer. The video shows our first experiments of this algorithm in a pool and having the robots at 2 different depths: near the surface and close to the ground.