TermiteSim

Abstract

Automation in the form of swarm robots is an increasingly feasible opportunity for solving complex physical problems. However, how such a swarm is to be instructed and controlled is one of the many topics that requires further research. For this, we can look to nature for inspiration, as there are many nest building swarms. Perhaps the most notable of which are the mound building termites. These termites build incredibly intricate mounds that contain a royal chamber, nurseries, fungal gardens, covered walkways, and even ventilation shafts to thermoregulate the inside of the mound. There are some attempts to capture this behaviour in custom simulators. The problem is that these simulators have limited capabilities. That is why a new simulator specifically for termite-like builder robot swarms is required for further research in this field. In this project, the different requirements for such a simulator are identified and used to develop an open-source state of the art simulator, TermiteSim. TermiteSim is designed for experimenting with different control strategies and tuning the simulation parameters to recreate the desired behaviour. In other words: a tool for researchers to design desired behaviour of a builder robot swarm. In this thesis TermiteSim is used to simulate several termite-like building behaviours described in the literature and the resulting structures are compared to those of other simulators, which TermiteSim was successfully able to recreate.