Projet de recherche doctoral numero :7690

Description

Date depot: 1 octobre 2020
Titre: Swarm Robotics as Active Matter
Directeur de thèse: Nicolas BREDECHE (ISIR (EDITE))
Directeur de thèse: Olivier DAUCHOT (Gulliver lab)
Domaine scientifique: Sciences et technologies de l'information et de la communication
Thématique CNRS : Robotique

Resumé: The goal of this thesis is to take a physicist's viewpoint of swarm robotics, in order to exploit what can be freely provided by physics, instead of relying on computational decision making. The physics of simple active liquid has recently converged towards a good level of theoretical understanding. This includes the description of two dynamical phase transitions, which are specific to active matter, namely the transition to collective motion and the motility induced phase separation. From the point of view of physics, a swarm of robots can be seen as a fluid, composed of self-propelling units, a so-called “active liquid”, in which the individual units carry a discrete set of policy's parameters. From the point of view of swarm robotics, the existence of these spontaneously forming phases, that of collectively moving units, or that of spontaneous clustering, indicate that a number of primitive, yet collective, tasks can be achieved without requesting for the logical or computational abilities of the robots.



Doctorant.e: Fersula Jérémy