Evolution of Self-Organized Task Specialization in Robot Swarms.

ABSTRACT: Division of labor is ubiquitous in biological systems, as evidenced by various forms of complex task specialization observed in both animal societies and multicellular organisms. Although clearly adaptive, the way in which division of labor first evolved remains enigmatic, as it requires the simultaneous co-occurrence of several complex traits to achieve the required degree of coordination. Recently, evolutionary swarm robotics has emerged as an excellent test bed to study the evolution of coordinated group-level behavior. Here we use this framework for the first time to study the evolutionary origin of behavioral task specialization among groups of identical robots. The scenario we study involves an advanced form of division of labor, common in insect societies and known as "task partitio

SUBMITTER: Ferrante E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4527708 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature