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The analysis is divided into two parts consisting of two large experiments each: the first part focuses on the issues of collaborative control, and the second part demonstrates how task performance is affected by the number of collaborating robots. Each experiment tests a key aspect of the problem, e.g. effects of obstacles, and defines performance metrics that help capture important characteristics of each solution.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>The new empirical simulations confirmed previous theoretical predictions: a physics\u2010based approach is more effective than the biologically inspired methods in meeting the objectives of the plume\u2010tracing mission. This gain in performance is consistent across a variety of plume and environmental conditions. This work shows that high success rate can be achieved by robots using strictly local information and a fully decentralized, fault\u2010tolerant, and reactive control algorithm.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>This is the first paper to compare a physics\u2010based approach against the leading alternatives for chemical plume tracing under a wide variety of fluid conditions and performance metrics. This is also the first presentation of the algorithms showing the specific mechanisms employed to achieve superior performance, including the underlying fluid and other physics principles and their numerical implementation, and the mechanisms that allow the practitioner to duplicate the outstanding performance of this approach under conditions of many robots navigating through obstacle\u2010dense environments.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/17563781011094205","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2010,11,27]],"date-time":"2010-11-27T07:05:50Z","timestamp":1290841550000},"page":"631-671","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":21,"title":["Experimental studies of swarm robotic chemical plume tracing using computational fluid dynamics simulations"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"3","author":[{"given":"Dimitri V.","family":"Zarzhitsky","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Diana F.","family":"Spears","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"David R.","family":"Thayer","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"key":"key2022020820470448000_b1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Balch, T. and Arkin, R. 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