Distributed teams of air and ground robots have the potential to be very useful in a variety of application domains, and much work is being done to design distributed algorithms that produce useful behaviors. This thesis presents a set of distributed algorithms that operate under minimal human input for patrol and cordon tasks. The algorithms allow the team to surround and travel between objects of interest. Empirical analyses indicate that the surrounding behaviors are robust to variations on the shape of the object of interest, communication loss, and robot failures.

Doctor of Philosophy / Collective actions of large animal groups result in elaborate behaviour, whose nature can be breathtaking in their complexity. Social organisation is the key to the origin of this behaviour and the mechanisms by which this organisation occurs are of particular interest. In this thesis, these mechanisms of social interactions and their consequences for group-level behaviour are explored. Social interactions amongst individuals are based on simple rules of attraction, alignment and orientation amongst neighbouring individuals. As part of this study, we will be interested in data that takes the form of a set of directions in space. In Chapter 2, we discuss relevant statistical measure and theory which will allow us to analyse directional data. These statistical tools will be employed on the results of the simulations of the mathematical models formulated in the course of the thesis. The first mathematical model for collective group behaviour is a Lagrangian self-organising model, which is formulated in Chapter 3. This model is based on basic social interactions between group members. Resulting collective behaviours and other related issues are examined during this chapter. Once we have an understanding of the model in Chapter 3, we use this model in Chapter 4 to investigate the idea of guidance of large groups by a select number of individuals. These individuals are privy to information regarding the location of a specific goal. This is used to explore a mechanism proposed for honeybee (Apis mellifera) swarm migrations. The spherical theory introduced in Chapter 2 will prove to be particularly useful in analysing the results of the modelling. In Chapter 5, we introduce a second mathematical model for aggregative behaviour. The model uses ideas from electromagnetic forces and particle physics, reinterpreting them in the context of social forces. While attraction and repulsion terms have been included in similar models in past literature, we introduce an orientation force to our model and show the requirement of a dissipative force to prevent individuals from escaping from the confines of the group.

Thesis (M.Sc.)(Computer Science)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-174). Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

We have simulated the behavior of several artificial flies, interacting visually with each other. Each fly is described by a simple tracking system (Poggio and Reichardt, 1973; Land and Collett, 1974) which summarizes behavioral experiments in which individual flies fixate a target. Our main finding is that the interaction of theses implemodules gives rise to a variety of relatively complex behaviors. In particular, we observe a swarm-like behavior of a group of many artificial flies for certain reasonable ranges of our tracking system parameters.

In this dissertation, we study two new approaches to fault detection for autonomous robots. The first approach involves the synthesis of software components that give a robot the capacity to detect faults which occur in itself. Our hypothesis is that hardware faults change the flow of sensory data and the actions performed by the control program. By detecting these changes, the presence of faults can be inferred. In order to test our hypothesis, we collect data in three different tasks performed by real robots. During a number of training runs, we record sensory data from the robots both while they are operating normally and after a fault has been injected. We use back-propagation neural networks to synthesize fault detection components based on the data collected in the training runs. We evaluate the performance of the trained fault detectors in terms of the number of false positives and the time it takes to detect a fault. The results show that good fault detectors can be obtained. We extend the set of possible faults and go on to show that a single fault detector can be trained to detect several faults in both a robot's sensors and actuators. We show that fault detectors can be synthesized that are robust to variations in the task. Finally, we show how a fault detector can be trained to allow one robot to detect faults that occur in another robot. The second approach involves the use of firefly-inspired synchronization to allow the presence of faulty robots to be determined by other non-faulty robots in a swarm robotic system. We take inspiration from the synchronized flashing behavior observed in some species of fireflies. Each robot flashes by lighting up its on-board red LEDs and neighboring robots are driven to flash in synchrony. The robots always interpret the absence of flashing by a particular robot as an indication that the robot has a fault. A faulty robot can stop flashing periodically for one of two reasons. The fault itself can render the robot unable to flash periodically. Alternatively, the faulty robot might be able to detect the fault itself using endogenous fault detection and decide to stop flashing. Thus, catastrophic faults in a robot can be directly detected by its peers, while the presence of less serious faults can be detected by the faulty robot itself, and actively communicated to neighboring robots. We explore the performance of the proposed algorithm both on a real world swarm robotic system and in simulation. We show that failed robots are detected correctly and in a timely manner, and we show that a system composed of robots with simulated self-repair capabilities can survive relatively high failure rates. We conclude that i) fault injection and learning can give robots the capacity to detect faults that occur in themselves, and that ii) firefly-inspired synchronization can enable robots in a swarm robotic system to detect and communicate faults.

This work studies the current collected by the spherical Langmuir probes to be mounted on the ESA Swarm satellites in order to quantify deviations from idealized cases caused by non-ideal probe geometry. The finite-element particle-in-cell code SPIS is used to model the current collection of a realistic probe, including the support structures, for two ionospheric plasma conditions with and without drift velocity. SPIS simulations are verified by comparing simulations of an ideal sphere at rest to previous numerical results by Laframboise parametrized to sufficient accuracy. It is found that for probe potentials much above the equivalent electron temperature, the deviations from ideal geometry decrease the current by up to 25 % compared to the ideal sphere case and thus must be corrected if data from this part of the probe curve has to be used for plasma density derivations. In comparison to the non-drifting case, including a plasma ram flow increases the current for probe potentials around and below the equivalent ion energy, as the contribution of the ions to the shielding is reduced by their high flow energy.

Das Forschungsfeld Schwarmintelligenz, also die Anwendung des Verhaltens dezentraler selbstorganisierender Tierkollektive, im Kontext der Informatik hat eine Reihe von state-of-the-art Kontroll- und Optimierungsmechanismen hervorgebracht. Die Untersuchung selbstorganisierender biologischer Systeme fördert zum einen das Design neuer robuster und adaptiver Algorithmen. Zum anderen kann sie das Verständnis der Funktionalität von selbstorganisierenden Prinzipien, welche in der Natur auftreten, unterstützen. Diese Arbeit deckt beide zuvor beschriebenen Aspekte ab. Unter Verwendung von Modellen und Simulation werden offene Fragen bezüglich der Organisation und des Verhaltens von sozialen Insekten beleuchtet. Weiter werden Abstraktionen von selbstorganisierenden Konzepten, welche man bei sozialen Insekten findet, genutzt, um neue Methoden zur Optimierung zu entwickeln. Der erste Teil dieser Arbeit untersucht allgemeine Aspekte der Arbeitsteilung sozialer Insekten. Zuerst wird die Anpassungsfähigkeit von unterschiedlich großen Kolonien, bezüglich dynamischer Veränderungen in der Umwelt untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Fähigkeit einer Kolonie, auf Veränderung in der Umwelt zu reagieren, von der Koloniegröße beeinflusst wird. Ein weiterer Aspekt der Arbeitsteilung, welcher in dieser Arbeit untersucht wird, ist, inwieweit eine räumliche Verteilung von Aufgaben und Individuen einen Einfluss auf die Arbeitsteilung hat. Die Ergebnisse deuten an, dass soziale Insekten von einer räumlichen Trennung, der zu bewerkstelligenden Aufgaben profitieren, da eine solche Trennung die Produktivität der Kolonie erhöht. Das könnte erklären, warum eine räumliche getrennte Anordnung von Aufgaben und Individuen häufig in realen Kolonien sozialer Insekten beobachtet werden kann. Der zweite Teil dieser Arbeit untersucht verschiedene Aspekte von Selbstorganisation bei Honigbienen. Zunächst wird der Einfluss der räumlichen Verteilung von Nestplätzen auf die Nestplatzsuche der europäischen Honigbiene Apis mellifera untersucht. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die Nestplatzsuche eines Schwarms aktiv durch die Anordnung der Nestplätze in der Umwelt beeinflusst wird. Eine nestplatzreiche Umgebung kann den Prozess eines Schwarms, sich für einen Nestplatz zu entscheiden, stark behindern. Das könnte erklären, warum Honigbienenarten, die geringe Anforderungen an Nestplätze haben, was die Anzahl von potenziellen Nestplätzen natürlich erhöht, eine sehr ungenaue Form der Nestplatzsuche aufweisen. Ein zweiter Aspekt der Honigbienen, welcher untersucht wird, sind die Steuerungsmechanismen, die dem kollektiven Flug eines Bienenschwarms unterliegen. Zwei mögliche Führungsmechanismen, aktive und passive Führung, werden hinsichtlich ihrer Fähigkeit verglichen, die Flugeigenschaften eines echten Honigbienenschwarms zu reproduzieren. Die Simulationsergebnisse bestätigen aktuelle empirische Befunde und zeigen, dass aktive Führung in der Lage ist, Charakteristika fliegender Schwärme widerzuspiegeln. Bei passiver Führung ist das nicht der Fall. Eine Anwendung biologischer Konzepte im Bereich der Informatik wird anhand der Nestplatzsuche demonstriert. Diese ist ein natürlicher Optimierungsprozess, basierend auf einfachen Regeln. Erzielt wird eine lokale Optimierung, die es einem Schwarm ermöglicht, Nestplätze in einer bisher unbekannten Umgebung zu finden und aus diesen den besten Nestplatz zu wählen. Das ist die Motivation, Nestplatzsuche im Bereich der Optimierung anzuwenden. Hierfür wird zuerst das Optimierungspotenzial der biologischen Nestplatzsuche mit Hilfe eines biologischen Modells untersucht. Basierend auf der Nestplatzsuche wird ein abstrahiertes algorithmisches Schema, das so genannte „Bee Nest-Site Selection Scheme“ (BNSSS) entworfen. Basierend auf dem Schema wird der erste Nestplatzsuche inspirierte Optimierungsalgorithmus „Bee-Nest\\\'\\\' für die Anwendung im Bereich von molekular Docking entwickelt. Im Vergleich zu anderen Optimierungsalgorithmen erzielt „Bee-Nest“ eine sehr gute Leistung. / The application in computer science of the behaviour found in decentralized self-organizing animal collectives -- also known as swarm intelligence -- has brought forward a number of state-of-the art control and optimization mechanisms. Further study of such self-organizing biological systems can foster the design of new robust and adaptive algorithms, as well as aid in the understanding of self-organizing processes found in nature. This thesis covers both of the aspects described above, namely the use of computational models to investigate open questions regarding the organization and behaviour of social insects, as well as using the abstraction of concepts found in social insects to generate new optimization methods. In the first part of this work, general aspects of division of labour in social insects are investigated. First the adaptiveness of different-sized colonies to dynamic changes in the environment is analysed. The findings show that a colony\\\'s ability to react to changes in the environment scales with its size. Another aspect of division of labour which is investigated is the extent to which different spatial distributions of tasks and individuals influence division of labour. The results suggest that social insects can benefit from a spatial separation of tasks within their environment, as this increases the colony\\\'s productivity. This could explain why a spatial organization of tasks and individuals is often observed in real social insect colonies. The second part of this work investigates several aspects of self-organization found in honeybees. First the influence of spatial nest-site distribution on the ability of the European honeybee Apis mellifera to select a new nest-site is studied. The results suggest that a swarm\\\'s habitat can influence its decision-making process. Nest-site rich habitats can obstruct a swarm\\\'s ability to choose a single site if all sites are of equal quality. This could explain why in nature honeybee species which have less requirements regarding a new nest-site have evolved a more imprecise form of nest-site selection than cavity-nesting species. Another aspect of honeybees which is investigated is the guidance behaviour in migrating swarms. Two potential guidance mechanisms, active and passive guidance, are compared regarding their ability to reproduce real honeybee swarm flight characteristics. The simulation results confirm previous empirical findings, as they show that active guidance is able to reflect a number of characteristics which can be observed in real moving honeybee swarms, while this is not the case for passive guidance. Nest-site selection in honeybees can be regarded as a natural optimization process. It is based on simple rules and achieves local optimization as it enables a swarm to decide between several potential nest-sites in a previously unknown dynamic environment. These factors motivate the application of the nest-site selection process to the problem domain of function optimization. First, the optimization potential of the biological nest-site selection process is studied. Then a general algorithmic scheme called ``Bee Nest-Site Selection Scheme\\\'\\\' (BNSSS) is introduced. Based on the scheme the first nest-site inspired optimization algorithm ``Bee-Nest\\\'\\\' is introduced and successfully applied to the domain of molecular docking.

In direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems, the heuristic optimization algorithms for multiuser detection include genetic algorithms (GA) and simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. In this thesis, we use particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms to solve the optimization problem of multiuser detection (MUD). PSO algorithm has several advantages, such as fast convergence, low computational complexity, and good performance in searching optimum solution. In order to enhance the performance and reduce the number of parameters, we propose two modified PSO algorithms, inertia weighting controlled PSO (W-PSO) and reduced-parameter PSO (R-PSO). From simulation results, the performance of our proposed algorithms can achieve that of optimal solution. Furthermore, our proposed algorithms have faster convergence performance and lower complexity when compared with other conventional algorithms.

The construction of Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) is one of the most important issues in systems biology. To infer a large-scale GRN with a nonlinear mathematical model, researchers need to encounter the time-consuming problem due to the large number of network parameters involved. In recent years, the cloud computing technique has been widely used to solve large-scale problems. Among others, Hadoop is currently the most well-known and reliable cloud computing framework, which allows users to analyze large amount of data in a distributed environment (i.e., MapReduce). It also supports data backup and data recovery mechanisms. This study proposes an Island-based GAPSO algorithm under the Hadoop cloud computing environment to infer large-scale GRNs. GAPSO exploited the position and velocity functions of PSO, and integrated the operations of Genetic Algorithm. This approach is often used to derive the optimal solution in nonlinear mathematical models. Several sets of experiments have been conducted, in which the number of network nodes varied from 50 to 125. The experiments were executed in the Hadoop distributed environment with 10, 20, and 26 computers, respectively. In the experiments of inferring the network with 125 gene nodes on the largest Hadoop cluster (i.e. 26 computers), the proposed framework performed up to 9.7 times faster than the stand-alone computer. It means that our work can successfully reduce 90% of the computation time in a single experimental run.

Due to the recent interest in broadband antennas a microstrip patch antenna was developed to meet the need for a cheap, low profile, broadband antenna. This antenna could be used in a wide range of applications such as in the communications industry for cell phones or satellite communication. Particle Swarm Optimization was used to design the dual-linear polarization broadband microstrip antenna and impedance matching network. This optimization method greatly reduced the time needed to find viable antenna parameters. A dual input patch antenna with over 30% bandwidth in the X-band was simulated using Ansoft's High Frequency Structural Simulator (HFSS) in conjunction with Particle Swarm Optimization. A single input and a dual input antenna was then fabricated. The fabricated antennas were composed of stacked microstrip patches over a set of bowtie apertures in the ground plane that were perpendicular to one another. A dual offset microstrip feedline was used to feed the aperture. Two different layers were used for the microstrip feedline of each polarization. The resulting measured impedance bandwidth was even wider than predicted. The antenna pattern was measured at several frequencies over the antenna bandwidth and was found to have good gain, consistent antenna patterns and low cross polarization.