Title: Clustering multiple robots with serialisation

Authors: Yasushi Kambayashi; Keisuke Satta; Ko Shibata; Shota Sugiyama; Munehiro Takimoto; Hidemi Yamachi

Addresses: Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Nippon Institute of Technology, 4-1 Gakuendai, Miyashiro-machi, Minamisaitama-gun, Saitama, 345-8501, Japan ' Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Nippon Institute of Technology, 4-1 Gakuendai, Miyashiro-machi, Minamisaitama-gun, Saitama, 345-8501, Japan ' Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Nippon Institute of Technology, 4-1 Gakuendai, Miyashiro-machi, Minamisaitama-gun, Saitama, 345-8501, Japan ' Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Nippon Institute of Technology, 4-1 Gakuendai, Miyashiro-machi, Minamisaitama-gun, Saitama, 345-8501, Japan ' Department of Information Sciences, Tokyo University of Science, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda 278-8510, Japan ' Department of Computer and Information Engineering, Nippon Institute of Technology, 4-1 Gakuendai, Miyashiro-machi, Minamisaitama-gun, Saitama, 345-8501, Japan

Abstract: This paper presents the design of an intelligent cart system to be used in a typical airport. The system consists of a set of mobile software agents to control the cart and provides a novel method for alignment. To avoid excessive energy consumption through the collection of the carts, we have used ant colony optimisation that uses the vector values of the scattered carts in the field. Waiting time and route to the destination of each cart is computed based on the cluster to be created. These routes and waiting times are conveyed by the mobile software agent to each cart, causing the group to form into rough lines. Because the carts are clustered by the similarity of their vectors, we have observed that several groups have appeared to have been successfully aligned by this method. We also propose a line forming technique for intelligent carts to actually align themselves.

Keywords: intelligent robots; mobile robots; mobile software agents; autonomous systems; ant colony optimisation; ACO; ant colony clustering; ACC; simulation; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; MAS; intelligent cart systems; airports; airport carts; robot control; cart control; energy consumption; cart collection; routes; waiting times; line forming; intelligent carts; self-alignment; baggage trolleys; airport trolleys; intelligent trolley systems; baggage carts

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIDS.2014.066641

International Journal of Intelligent Information and Database Systems, 2014 Vol.8 No.3, pp.224 - 243

Received: 01 Apr 2013
Accepted: 21 Dec 2013
Published online: 11 Jan 2015 *

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