Bio‐Inspired Swarm Robotics Design for Mine Automation

The mining industry faces ongoing challenges related to operational efficiency, ecological footprint and personnel safety as operations expand into remote areas with extreme conditions. This article proposes and analyses three swarm robotic strategies for mine automation: Baseline (immediate return), Ant (tandem partitioning) and Honeybee (memory‐retrieval), implemented on the Pololu Zumo 2040 robot platform. The models, inspired by leafcutter ant and honeybee foraging behaviour, deploy decentralized control to bypass the constraints of traditional centralized mining systems. Experiments in a scaled straight‐line haul‐route environment compare total travel distance, energy consumption and ore delivery time across the three strategies. The Ant model offers continuous exploration and parallel transport, reducing completion time compared to the Baseline model. The Honeybee model minimizes mid‐route travel by memorizing ore locations before retrieval. In a 16‐m route test with 8 ore blocks, the Honeybee model achieves up to an 80% reduction in travel distance, about a 50% decrease in energy consumption and a 60% decrease in ore delivery time compared to the Baseline model. Transitioning to hardware testing exposes additional challenges such as sensor calibration, mechanical misalignment, battery constraints and variable environmental conditions. Key Points Three bio‐inspired swarm robotic strategies (Baseline, Ant, and Honeybee) are implemented and compared for mine haul‐route automation. Decentralized control inspired by leafcutter ants and honeybees is realized on Pololu Zumo 2040 robots in a physical laboratory test‐bed. The Ant strategy applied tandem task partitioning to enable parallel exploration and ore transport. The Honeybee strategy seperated exploration and retrieval by memorizing ore locations before optimized collection. Performance is evaluated using total travel distance, estimated energy consumption, and ore delivery time in a scaled straight‐line haul‐route environment. In a 16 m route with eight ore blocks, the Honeybee strategy acheives up to 80% reduction in travel distance, 50% lower energy consumption, and 60% faster ore delivery compared with the Baseline strategy. Hardware experiments reveal practical constraints including sensor calibration, mechanical alignment, battery limitations, and environmental variability.