Results on the Convergence of Braitenberg Vehicle 3a

Braitenberg vehicles are well-known models of animal behavior used as steering mechanisms in mobile robotics and artificial life. Because of their simplicity, they are mainly used for teaching robotics, while the lack of a quantitative theory has limited their use for research purposes. This article contributes to our formal understanding of Braitenberg vehicle 3a by presenting the convergence properties of its trajectories under parabolic-shaped stimuli. We show previously unreported features of the motion of the vehicle: the conditional stability, the oscillatory behavior, and the existence of periodic trajectories. The mathematical model used provides a theoretical relation between the environment, the internal control mechanism of the vehicle, and some morphological parameters, a link already found in experimental works. This work provides theoretical support for experimental research using Braitenberg vehicle 3a, and paves the way for further research in biology, robotics, and artificial life.

Probabilistic Control and Swarm Dynamics in Mobile Robots and Ants

The chapter considers the method of probabilistic control of mobile robots navigating in random environments and mimicking the foraging activity of ants, which is widely accepted as optimal with respect to the environmental conditions. The control is based on the Tsetlin automaton, which is a minimal automaton demonstrating an expedient behavior in random environments. The suggested automaton implements probability-based aggregators, which form a complete algebraic system and support an activity of the automaton over non-Boolean variables. The considered mobile agents are based on the Braitenberg vehicles equipped with four types of sensors, which mimic the basic sensing abilities of ants: short- and long-distance sensing of environmental states, sensing of neighboring agents, and sensing the pheromone traces. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the foraging behavior of the suggested mobile agents, running both individually and in groups, is statistically indistinguishable from the foraging behavior of real ants observed in laboratory experiments.