Artificial Immune System for Heterogeneous Mobile Robotic Systems

Artificial immune system draws its inspiration from the biological immune functions mainly those of humans. Recently, newer definitions of biological immune system have appeared and gained significance because of their strong immunological roots e.g. danger theory. This raises the need to look into earlier work on immuno-inspired robotics. Especially, older approach of idiotypic-network must be compared with the newer approach of danger-theory. Authors in this research have successfully applied both the definitions on heterogeneous mobile robotic systems. Idiotypic connections between antibodies have been used as a tool to navigate robots as well as to establish inter-robot communication in an immune network approach. Similarly, co-stimulatory signal concentrations have been used to contextualize the environment, in a danger theory approach, to initiate and regulate the immuno responses. Immune metaphors have been translated into relevant computational models and simulated in search and rescue operation in an obstacle filled arena.