Effects of population density on the emergence of circle formation in multiple robots system with a local vision

This paper deals with the effects of robot population density on the emergence of circle formation in multiple robots system. Individual robot has a specific range of signal communication to detect other robots. According to the information about the location of one or two robots detected by the signal communication within the range, the robot takes an action such as proceeding forward or turning left/right at each time step. Implementing this action selection algorithm to each of the robots, we carry out the computer simulation of global behaviors in the multiple robots system, and we find that there exists a certain condition under which the circle formation emerges in the multiple robots system. To investigate the effects of the robot population involved and the size of the simulation area on the characteristics of the circle formation, the computer simulation was made and it clarified that the emergence of the circle formation in the multiple robots system is strongly influenced by the robot population density rather than to the robot population and the simulation area size.