Knowing the floorplan of an incident site beforehand allows first responders to operate quicker and more efficient. This thesis explores the potential of using robotic swarms for environment mapping, with the goal of deploying these swarms to create maps before emergency personnel arrive on the scene. We present BICLARE, a lightweight collaborative algorithm for robust exploration. Inspired by ant colony behaviour, specifically how they use pheromones for communication and navigation, BICLARE implements a confidence model to determine the occupancy of cells within a map. Target selection considering travel time and estimated battery power ensures its efficiency. Including computation-saving parameters ensures it lightweight execution, enabling it to work on inexpensive hardware. The performance of the algorithm was evaluated through a series of simulated experiments in a variety of environments, proving it can generate accurate maps with adequate coverage in noisy, volatile environments. A real-life experiment demonstrated that it can successfully run on low-cost hardware in a real-world experiment.

This paper analyzes how flocking behavior in fish can be used to develop target protection algorithms. This starts from the hypothesis that fish aggregate into coordinated flocks in order to protect themselves from predatory attacks. In order to test the protection capabilities of fish, a Prey-Predator instance is developed in which faults are introduced. Prey fish try to protect their faulty flock-mates and themselves from predatory attacks while Predators hunt the fish in order to stay alive. The simulated fish are developed using Boids that emerge in a 70 prey versus 7 predators ecosystem [4]. Results are then extracted using multiple attacking and protection strategies as well as different faulty Boid configurations.
The results initially show no improvement when flocking around faulty prey but when a genetic approach is introduced, the prey gains a clear advantage against the predators. This implies that fish flocking (as opposed to individualistic behavior) is an optimal protection strategy against attacks and could be used in other instances such as military operations or agriculture automation.

One of the key problems of swarm robotics is how the mobile robots can navigate accurately in a given environment. To achieve this, the mobile robots need to accurately determine where they are globally, or relative to other robots and landmarks. This paper is going to be an investigation of the Monte Carlo Localization algorithm in an environment containing 3 anchors. In addition, an alternative modification is suggested to this localization algorithm to improve the localization performance. An experiment is devised to assess different aspects of localization performances of these algorithms. With the experimental results, a quantitative analysis of performance figures are compared and analyzed.

In this paper, we explore the creation of control algorithms for swarms of robots playing the role of either predator or prey in an environment filled with static obstacles. The paper devel- ops on a famous flock simulation model proposed by Craig Reynolds called boids. The paper analyzes a zero-sum game situation, in which one swarm of robots, the prey, is trying to reach a certain pre-determined target, while another swarm of robots, the predator, is trying to prevent it from reaching its objective. Swarm control algorithms for both the predator and the prey scenarios are analyzed in an arms race manner. The robots are modelled as point-mass holonomic entities, that can move in arbitrary directions. The proposed algorithms are tested on characteristics such as success rate and time in a simulated environment. As a result, a set of algorithms for both the predator and prey are proposed and their strength and weaknesses are discussed.

A majority of existing single-anchor localization algorithms make use of antenna arrays or special antenna systems. However, the need for specialized antenna systems incurs higher costs, complexity and power consumption. This paper presents a novel single-anchor localization algorithm, which does not require antenna arrays or special antennas. The algorithm is implemented in a two-robot system, where one of the robots acts as the anchor and the other acts as the target. The localization algorithm uses velocity measurements of each robot and distance measurements between robots. Using the change in distance between the robots and the velocity of the target robot relative to the anchor robot, the target robot can be localized relative to the anchor robot. The localization algorithm uses a Kalman filter as a state estimator of the movement of the target robot and a Savitzky-Golay filter to filter the distance measurements. A simulation with Gaussian noise in the distance measurements is performed to display the impact of the filtering methods. Another simulation showed an average localization error of 1.38 meters when the distance measurements are acquired through RSSI measurements, which is comparable to existing RSSI-based localization methods.