Variations of Models and Characteristics of Robots
Let’s briefly discusses about the characteristics of robots and various models. The robots are generally assumed as points. The point robots are dimensionless and they occupy no physical space on the plane. While in many problems, the robots are assumed to be three dimensional, are called as fat robots. These fat robots occupy physical space on the plane due to which they can hamper the visibility and movement of other robots.
Depending on the type of problem, robots can have different characteristics. Different settings evolve from different assumptions that are made on the robots capabilities. In particular, visibility of the robots, their orientation and directions, ability to store the past information, the computational cycle, etc. During its life, each robot executes four states look, compute, wait and move, this sequence is called computational cycle.
We have discussed some simple interactions that can occur between the robots such as aggregation, collision avoidance, dispersion, following and homing. These simple interactions can be used to solve complex task assigned to the robots.
2.1 The Properties of Robots
Each robot is assumed to occupy a point on a two dimensional plane. These robots are equipped with sensorial capability that allows them to sense their surroundings. A robot then computes a destination point according to the data it sensed. Finally, robot moves to the destination point it just computed. Moreover, the robots can have the following properties depending upon the type of model it follows:
- Homogeneity: Robots may be homogeneous or heterogeneous in terms of their hardware and software. Robots are said to be homogeneous if they are identical in terms of shape and size, visibility, computational power, memory, etc. In most of the cases robots are assumed to be homogeneous. However, there are some cases where robots are assumed to be heterogeneous also [25].
- Autonomous: Robots are said to be autonomous if they do not depend on any central coordination system. But, in many cases system has been found to be centralized also.
- Mobility: The ability of a robot to move on plane is called mobility of the robot. Motorial capability of robot allows them to move on a plane.
- Anonymity: The robots are said to be anonymous if they do not have any identification that they can use during the computation. However, in some cases robots may not be anonymous.
- Memoryless: Some robots have the capability to store and use the past information, while some robots do not have this capability called oblivious.
- Communication: Robots cannot communicate explicitly with each other. It happens by means of observing the positions of other robots in the plane.
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