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Evolution of Solitary and Group Transport Behaviors for Autonomous Robots Capable of Self-Assembling

This paper studies the minimal requirements for working effectively in groups. It investigates the situation where multiple robots transport a heavy object cooperatively. It is proven that working effectively in groups does not fundamentally require individuals to be aware of each other. This is the first study where robots were used to test the theory on the evolutionary transition from solitary to social behaviour in ants. Moreover, it laid the foundation for our research on cooperative transport, which attracted world-wide media attention, for example, by Reuters (http://in.reuters.com/video/2013/06/05/fetching-and-carrying-robots-swarm-neare?videoId=243157941), Time magazine (http://techland.time.com/2013/04/01/watch-robot-swarms-of-the-future-because-sometimes-it-takes-a-village/), the Gadget Show (http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-show/blog/future-special-robotics) and BBC's Science Club (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01fwf61).