PSO-based Search mechanism in dynamic environments: Swarms in Vector Fields

This paper presents the Vector Field Map PSO (VFM-PSO) as a collective search algorithm for aerial micro-robots in environments with unknown external dynamics (such as wind). The proposed method is based on a multi-swarm approach and allows to cope with unknown disturbances arising by the vector fields in which the positions and the movements of the particles are highly affected. VFM-PSO requires gathering the information regarding the vector fields and one of our goals is to investigate the amount of the required information for a successful search mechanism. The experiments show that VFM-PSO can reduce the drift and improves the performance of the PSO algorithm despite incomplete information (awareness) about the structure of considered vector fields.