Past, Present, and Future of Swarm Robotics

Abstract

Swarm Robotics is an emerging field of adapting the phenomenon of natural swarms to robotics. It is a study of robots that are aimed to mimic natural swarms, like ants and birds, to form a system that is scalable, flexible, and robust. These robots show self-organization, autonomy, cooperation, and coordination amongst themselves. The cost and design complexity factor is aimed to keep low, hence trying to form systems that are very much similar to natural swarms. The robots operate without any central entity to control them, and the communication amongst the robots can either be direct (robot-to-robot) or indirect (robotto-environment). Swarm robotics has a wide range of application fields, from simple household tasks to military missions. This paper reviews the swarm robotics approach from its history to its future. It discusses the basic idea of swarm robotics, its important features, simulators, projects, real life applications and some future ideas.

Search and rescue with sparsely connected swarms

“…It is inspired by societies of insects, where groups can achieve tasks beyond the capabilities of the individuals [1]. With properties such as scalability, robustness, autonomy, decentralization [2], swarm robotics allow a wide variety of applications, including nanomedicine, space exploration, search and rescue missions, and generally tasks in dangerous areas [2]. Despite all these possible applications, most of the field of swarm robotics is still firmly at the research stage.…”