On Assessing the Temporal Characteristics of Reaching the Milestone by a Swarm

The physical swarm operation is investigated. Swarm units are considered as three-wheeled mobile robots, moving through rough terrain. For the longitudinal movement of such type vehicle the dynamic model is obtained. The article discusses the issue of forecasting the time a physical swarm reaches a milestone and proposes a hypothesis on the form of the law of the distribution of time during which a swarm unit reaches a milestone. Obtaining this time distribution is carried out with use the Petri-Markov net fundamental apparatus. With use Petri-Markov nets time densities of reaching the milestone both one unit and swarm as a whole are obtained. More common formula of distribution of time of milestone reaching by l units of K is obtained too. To confirm the hypothesis about the type of theoretical time distribution a computer experiment was carried out using the Monte Carlo method.