Lecture

Distributed Intelligent Systems: Division of Labor and Multi-Robot Coordination

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In course

ENG-466: Distributed intelligent systems

The goal of this course is to provide methods and tools for modeling distributed intelligent systems as well as designing and optimizing coordination strategies. The course is a well-balanced mixture of theory and practical activities. ...

Description

This lecture by the instructor covers the concept of division of labor in natural systems, focusing on social insects. It explains the control of task allocation and the different castes involved. The lecture delves into the behavioral changes in worker bees as they age, the flexibility of social roles, and the implementation of flexibility at the individual level. It also explores threshold-based and market-based algorithms applied to multi-robot coordination, with examples and comparisons. The lecture concludes with a discussion on the control of the division of labor using variable threshold models and the challenges of uncertainty and computation complexity in market-based coordination.

Instructor

Alcherio Martinoli

I received my Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). I am currently an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, Civil, and Environmental Engineering and the head of the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Laboratory. Before joining EPFL I carried out research activities at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering of the ETHZ, at the Institute of Industrial Automation of the Spanish Research Council in Madrid, Spain, and at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, U.S.A. Additional information can be found on my full CV.

Official source

Related concepts (31)

Worker bee

A worker bee is any female (eusocial) bee that lacks the full reproductive capacity of the colony's queen bee; under most circumstances, this is correlated to an increase in certain non-reproductive activities relative to a queen. While worker bees occur in all eusocial bee species, the term is rarely used (outside of scientific literature) for any bees other than honey bees. Honey bee workers gather pollen into the pollen baskets on their back legs and carry it back to the hive where it is used as food for the developing brood.

Honey bee

A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade, all native to mainland Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosmopolitan distribution of honey bees, introducing multiple subspecies into South America (early 16th century), North America (early 17th century), and Australia (early 19th century).

Computational complexity

In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations) and memory storage requirements. The complexity of a problem is the complexity of the best algorithms that allow solving the problem. The study of the complexity of explicitly given algorithms is called analysis of algorithms, while the study of the complexity of problems is called computational complexity theory.

Computational complexity theory

In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by a computer. A computation problem is solvable by mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an algorithm. A problem is regarded as inherently difficult if its solution requires significant resources, whatever the algorithm used.

Eusociality

Eusociality (from Greek εὖ eu "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'.

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