Animals navigate through their environment using diverse strategies.
These navigation strategies might be highly dependent on the
animal's ecological niche.
Though a lot of work is
focused on biological navigation mechanisms, the cognitive ecology
of spatial memory is poorly understood. The performances of
different navigation mechanisms in the context of a biologically
relevant behavior can be assessed by using mobile robots. For this
task, territorial
behavior was built on
Khepera
miniature robots. Territoriality is strongly
dependent on spatial learning and thus provides a powerful context
for testing of sensory and computational complexity needed by
animals solving special tasks. Simultaneously, the principles
underlying the establishment of territories in a previously
uninhabited area and how it is dependent on environmental parameters
can be investigated. In the present paper, territoriality in robots
is introduced. The robots navigate by relying on poor sensor input
and a representation of the environment of a low complexity.
Qualitative results show that territories form. Subsequently, the
consequences of the introduction of a newcomer in already
established territories are presented.