not knowing their absolute positions. In the self-organization algorithm, the robots never

collide since collision avoidance is intrinsically built in the technique with each robot

repelling all other robots by transmitting the IP.

 The following simulation compares the spreading speed between the IPIM based

self-organization algorithm and the nearest neighbor technique. Both the techniques are

applied for spreading of robots over a circular region with a unit radius. The uniformity

of the resulting distribution of robots was calculated using the same technique explained

in section 3.2.3.2 and the variances are shown in the figures 3.13 through 3.15 for various

number of robots. It is clear that the self-organization algorithm brings uniformity in the

distribution faster than the nearest neighbor technique. Also the final variance achieved

by the self-organization algorithm is always smaller, which is visible when the number of

robots N = 30 and 50. It should be mentioned that the speed of the robots was kept to be

same for a fair comparison.

 Above all, IPIM is a framework which offers more flexibility in self-organization.

The robots can be organized in different ways by using different types of IPs. Moreover,

the nearest neighbor technique can be viewed as a part of the IPIM based self-

organization where the IP transmitted by the robots can reach only the nearest

neighbors) around them located within a stipulated distance. Hence, IPIM can be seen as

a generalized framework, with many parameters that can be suitably tuned according to

the requirements of the application on hand.