@ARTICLE{Berman_Lindsey_sakar_kumar_Pratt_11,
	author={S. Berman and Q. Lindsey and M. S. Sakar and V. Kumar and S. C. Pratt},
	journal={Proceedings of the IEEE},
	title={Experimental Study and Modeling of Group Retrieval in Ants as an Approach to Collective Transport in Swarm Robotic Systems},
	year={2011},
	volume={99},
	number={9},
	pages={1470-1481},
	abstract={Group food retrieval in some ant species serves as a useful paradigm for multirobot collective transport 
        strategies that are decentralized, scalable, and do not require a priori information about the payload. We present 
        a comprehensive overview of group retrieval in ants and investigate this phenomenon in Aphaenogaster cockerelli in 
        order to extract the ants' roles during transport, the rules that govern their actions, and the individual forces 
        that they apply to guide a food item to their nest. To measure these forces, we fabricated elastic structures with 
        calibrated stiffness properties, induced ants to retrieve the structures, and tracked the resulting deformations with 
        a camera. We then developed a hybrid system model of the ant behaviors that were observed in the experiments. We conducted 
        simulations of the behavioral model that incorporate a quasi-static model of planar manipulation with compliant attachment 
        points. Our simulations qualitatively replicate individual ant activity as well as certain macroscopic features of the transport.},
	keywords={compliant mechanisms;cooperative systems;elasticity;manipulators;multi-robot systems;multivariable systems;robot vision;Aphaenogaster cockerelli;ant behavioral model;calibrated stiffness properties;camera;collective transport;compliant attachment points;deformation;elastic structures;group food retrieval;hybrid system model;multirobot collective transport strategies;planar manipulation;quasistatic model;swarm robotic system;Biological system modeling;Cooperative systems;Distributed control;Payloads;Robot kinematics;Robot sensing systems;Biological system modeling;cooperative manipulation;distributed control;multirobot systems},
	doi={10.1109/JPROC.2011.2111450},
	ISSN={0018-9219},
	month={Sept},
	
}