Work

A Nature-Inspired Hybrid Heuristic for Orchestrating the Self-Deployment of Mobile Supply Robots in Communication-Contested Environments

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: We present a nature-inspired approach for self-organizing logistics in contested environments characterized by uncertainty. The presented approach leverages territorial partitioning principles observed in natural collectives and systems. The logistics challenge addressed involves autonomously deploying a fleet of uncrewed mobile robots tasked with dynamically adjusting their positions to optimally service spatially and temporally fluctuating demands. Unlike traditional logistics, our approach is largely decentralized, relying almost exclusively on local interactions and decision-making. Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to evaluate performance across different scenarios, varying in client distribution (from uniform to highly clustered) and the range of the local perception of the logistic platform. Results demonstrate that the decentralized allocation strategy can deliver logistics support at a performance on par with a traditional clustering method, such as k-means, at runtime and without preliminary offline calculations.

Source: Biomimetics

DOI: 10.3390/biomimetics11090612

Authors: Fabrice Saffre, Hanno Hildmann

Institutions: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, The Hague University of Applied Sciences

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics Optimization

Subfield: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,654