Behavioral Diversity in Learning Robot Teams

I will talk about my work investigating the origins of behavioral 
diversity in learning robot teams. Behavioral diversity refers to the
extent to which agents assume distinct behavioral roles in a group. 
Most research in multirobot teams to date has centered on homogeneous 
systems, with work in heterogeneous groups focused primarily on 
mechanical and sensor differences between agents. In contrast, this 
work examines teams of mechanically identical robots. These systems 
are interesting because they may be homogeneous or heterogeneous 
depending only on behavior.   New metrics for investigating diversity
were developed, including a measure of individual robot difference 
and overall system diversity.  I will also review a number of experiments 
using the metrics in simulated and real mobile robot systems.  The 
experiments specifically investigate the relationship between the 
reinforcement function used for training and the diversity and 
performance of the resulting multi-robot teams.