• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About the ART Lab
  • Research
  • Publications
  • People
  • Contact Us
  • News

Adaptive Robotics & Technology Lab

Texas A&M University College of Engineering

Consensus decision-making in artificial swarms via entropy-based local negotiation and preference updating

Chuanqi Zheng and Kiju Lee

Swarm Intelligence

5/15/2023

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11721-023-00226-3

This paper presents an entropy-based consensus algorithm for a swarm of artificial agents with limited sensing, communication, and processing capabilities. Each agent is modeled as a probabilistic finite state machine with a preference for a finite number of options defined as a probability distribution. The most preferred option, called exhibited decision, determines the agent’s state. The state transition is governed by internally updating this preference based on the states of neighboring agents and their entropy-based levels of certainty. Swarm agents continuously update their preferences by exchanging the exhibited decisions and the certainty values among the locally connected neighbors, leading to consensus towards an agreed-upon decision. The presented method is evaluated for its scalability over the swarm size and the number of options and its reliability under different conditions. Adopting classical best-of-N target selection scenarios, the algorithm is compared with three existing methods, the majority rule, frequency-based method, and k-unanimity method. The evaluation results show that the entropy-based method is reliable and efficient in these consensus problems.

Recent Posts

  • Comparison of GPS Collars and Solar-Powered GPS Ear Tags for Animal Movement Studies
  • Low-Cost, Compact Mobile Robot for Autonomous Soil Monitoring in Crop Fields
  • Hardware Prototype and System Apparatus of an Autonomous Robotic Harvesting Cell
  • Multi-Robot Shepherding: A CLF-CBF Approach
  • Unmanned aerial system and machine learning driven Digital-Twin framework for in-season cotton growth forecasting

© 2016–2025 Adaptive Robotics & Technology Lab Log in

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Logo
  • State of Texas
  • Open Records
  • Risk, Fraud & Misconduct Hotline
  • Statewide Search
  • Site Links & Policies
  • Accommodations
  • Environmental Health, Safety & Security
  • Employment