Synopses & Reviews
Swarm robotics can be defined as the study of how a swarm of relatively simple physically embodied agents can be constructed to collectively accomplish tasks that are beyond the capabilities of a single one. Unlike other studies on multi-robot systems, swarm robotics emphasizes self-organization and emergence, while keeping in mind the issues of scalability and robustness. These emphases promote the use of relatively simple robots, equipped with localized sensing ability, scalable communication mechanisms, and the exploration of decentralized control strategies.
This state-of-the-art survey is the first book devoted to swarm robotics. It is based on the First International Workshop on Swarm Robotics held in Santa Monica, CA, USA in July 2004 as part of SAB 2004
Synopsis
Swarm robotics is the study of how large numbers of relatively simple physically embodied agentscanbe designedsuchthat a desiredcollectivebehavioremerges from the local interactions among agents and between the agents and the en- ronment. Swarm robotics has emerged as a novel approach to the coordination of large numbers of robots and is inspired from observation of social insects ants, termites, wasps and bees which stand as fascinating examples of how a large number of simple individuals can interact to create collectively intelligent systems. Socialinsects areknownto coordinatetheir actionsto accomplishtasks that are far beyond the capabilities of a single individual: termites build large and complex mounds, army ants organize impressive foraging raids, ants can collectively carry large prey. Such coordination capabilities are still well beyond the reach of current multi-robot systems. Researchon swarmroboticshasseen a signi?cantincreasein the last 5 years. A number of successful swarm robotic systems have now been demonstrated in the laboratory and the study of the design, modelling, implementation and analysis of swarm robotic systems has become a hot topic of research. This workshop was organized within SAB 2006, as a sequel to the successful ?rst swarmroboticsworkshopin2004, withtheaimofreviewingandupdatingrecent advances on the topic. We received 21 full papers (20 research + 1 review) and accepted 14 (13 research + 1 review). Overall, we, as organizers, were pleased with the number of submissions, and a number of our reviewers explicitly commented on the generally high quality of the papers."
Synopsis
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 2nd SAB 2006 International Workshop on Swarm Robotics held in Rome, Italy in September/October 2006 as a satellite event of SAB 2006, the 9th Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior. The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on algorithms, modelling and analysis, hardware, and evolutionary approaches.