Adaptive Repulsive Pheromone Clustering for Foraging Robot Swarms
This study addresses the inefficiency caused by redundant exploration in robotic swarm foraging by proposing an Adaptive Repellent Pheromone Clustering method. This approach innovatively integrates bio-inspired pheromone deposition with nest-centric clustering estimation to mark explored areas and steer agents away from low-value zones, thereby achieving a dynamic balance between resource exploitation and exploratory redundancy. Extensive validation across multiple scenarios using ARGoS simulations demonstrates that the proposed method significantly outperforms traditional strategies. Specifically, it improves early resource discovery rates by 10% and increases late-stage collection efficiency by up to 60%. These results confirm that the method effectively enhances search diversity and overall system performance in swarm foraging tasks.