Collaboration among a Group of Self-Autonomous Mobile Robots with Diversified Personalities

Simulation studies were carried out about a group of self-autonomous mobile robots collaborating in collection cleaning-up tasks. The robots are endowed with two kinds of human-like personalities; positivity and tenderness. Dependent on the rank of positivity, decision is made on which one of robots nearby should avoid collision and which one of robots heading for the same small baggage should carry one. As for large baggage which can be carried only by two collaborating robots, tenderness plays an essential role. In the first series of simulation, the initial configuration of 4 robots, 4 small baggage, and 2 large baggage were fixed. The cleaning-up tasks were carried out for all combinations of personalities, 625 cases in total. In the second series, 8 robots performed the task. 5 voluntarily cases were chosen to carry out 100 simulations for each case, by changing the configuration of baggage. From the results of the simulation, it was found that the heterogeneous group performs the task more effectively than the homogeneous group. It seems that diversity in personality is good for survival. In addition to the performance index of task execution time, satisfaction index is introduced to evaluate the degree of satisfaction of the group, too.