Cognitive maps in swarm robots for the mine detection application

Navigation based on cognition is seen in many instances in the animal community. Maps are very useful for navigation in unknown and complex environments. User defined and preinstalled maps can be very useful in navigation in complex environments, while adaptively built maps become very essential in unknown environments. Intelligence is bestowed in the effective utilization of data to produce decisions. In the case of navigation, intelligence is seen when information collected en-route from a source to a destination is used judiciously in reaching the destination. In this paper we deal with the foraging of a piece of terrain as a process of navigation. The application here is on mine detection. Mines are placed over a field at unknown locations and swarm intelligence based agents are deployed for demining them. The efficiency of the demining process is measured in terms of the quickness with which they can clear the mines and the assurance that the minefield is clear of all of the mines at the end of the process. Simulation results acknowledging the performance under different working conditions of the swarm robots are presented. In an endeavor to substantiate our claims in simulation we decided to build swarm robots performing the task on an artificially developed environment.