| Social insects have several inherent abilities which are of interest to robotics researchers. One such unique and interesting ability is that of distributed and cooperative construction. Social insects are capable of, through the collective actions of many simple agents, constructing not only large, but complex nest structures. A mechanism used by social insects for the purpose of construction is construction templates. Similar to blueprints, a construction template is used by insects to guide where building material is deposited. In the insect world this template is most often an environmental heterogeneity (e.g. a crack in a rock) or insect induced via pheromones. In either case the structures created are organic, unplanned, and completely unique. However, the mechanisms these simple agents use can be manipulated, and adapted for use by likewise simple robotic swarms in hopes that these robotic agents will automate human scale constructions.;Simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system with respect to planar shapes. Furthermore, a hardware prototype capable of simple ring shaped constructions is developed and used to validate the simulation results.;This thesis describes a method by which the template based method of construction is extended, enabling structures of any shape consisting solely of straight lines to be built. This extension occurs by placing a certain amount of intelligence within the template, and is accomplished through the use of intelligent beacons, which are positioned by the robots according to a high-level plan specified by a human user. The intelligent beacons, once placed by the robots, use a trip-line approach to trigger material deposition. This system not only enables a swarm to construct more generalized shapes, but also retains the benefits of using swarm systems such as their robustness, high amount of parallelism, and simplicity. |
