Editorial: Special Issue “Swarm Robotics”

Abstract

Swarm robotics is the study of how to coordinate large groups of relatively simple robots through the use of local rules so that a desired collective behavior emerges from their interaction. The group behavior emerging in the swarms takes its inspiration from societies of insects that can perform tasks that are beyond the capabilities of the individuals. The swarm robotics inspired from nature is a combination of swarm intelligence and robotics [1], which shows a great potential in several aspects. The activities of social insects are often based on a self-organizing process that relies on the combination of the following four basic rules: Positive feedback, negative feedback, randomness, and multiple interactions [2,3].Collectively working robot teams can solve a problem more efficiently than a single robot while also providing robustness and flexibility to the group. The swarm robotics model is a key component of a cooperative algorithm that controls the behaviors and interactions of all individuals. In the model, the robots in the swarm should have some basic functions, such as sensing, communicating, motioning, and satisfy the following properties:

Search and Rescue in a Maze-like Environment with Ant and Dijkstra Algorithms

“…Disaster response operations increasingly first deploy autonomous technology prior to dispatching human personnel. Drones can provide a first situational assessment and indeed, Spezzano (2019) highlights the ability to sense as an integral basic functionality of drones. Furthermore, the deployment of a UAVs (be it as single units or as a swarm) to act as a nodes in, or to entirely constitute, a cell network (Bupe et al, 2015) has been discussed in the literature.…”

Review: Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as Mobile Sensing Platforms (MSPs) for Disaster Response, Civil Security and Public Safety

“…Communication is identified as one of the integral basic functionalities of a swarm [12]. Because of their high mobility and capability for rapid deployment [34], UAVs are often proposed as enabler for aerial mobile communication structures.…”

“…This can be due to the location (indoor [99] or in so-called urban canyons between high rise buildings [50]) disasters (such as e.g., Hurricane Katrina, which lead to the disconnection of 3 million land-line phones and more than 2000 cell sites [55]) or when the infrastructure has been compromised (e.g., [120]). A significant amount of research [7,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]121] is now directed at self-organizing formation control and self-assembly methods especially in the absence of global communication.…”

“…Such collectives of cooperating devices often solve problems far more efficiently than a single device, especially in environments subject to continuous change. In [12] the authors identify 3 categories of applications which are currently attracting a lot of attention from the community: (1) formation control and self-assembly methods ( [11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]), (2) localization and search methods ( [20][21][22][23][24]) and (3) techniques for solving optimization problems ( [25][26][27]). Furthermore, ref [12] highlights the ability to sense as an integral basic functionality.…”

Civilian UAV Deployment Framework in Qatar

“…They have also investigated how to extend power management strategies in cooperation with other cyber-physical UAV networks that operate independently without human intervention. Spezzano [10] identified three categories of UAV implementation that have recently received significant attention:…”