The State of the Art of Swarm Robotics

Dear Colleagues,

Swarm robotic systems are large teams of small, simple, and collaborative robots, implemented with the aim of replacing traditional small teams of large and sophisticated robots. The use of such large teams of simple robots promotes both robustness to environmental disturbances and failure of robot components, as well as flexibility in their application to real-world problems that may be inaccessible to larger robots. Swarm robotics has recently received increased attention due to advances and miniaturization in sensing, processing, communication, and manipulation technologies. Furthermore, they have been proposed for and used in a variety of industries, such as agriculture, environmental monitoring, and entertainment.

While the simplicity of the robots used in a swarm provides the benefits detailed above, it also increases the difficulty of controlling them. Technologies used in swarm robotics typically restrict an individual swarm robot solely to local information about its neighbors and environment. As such, the methodologies developed for traditional robotic systems cannot simply be transferred to a swarm, and swarm-specific approaches are necessary for their autonomous and semi-autonomous control. The goal of this Special Issue is thus to provide an opportunity to present state-of-the-art contributions in swarm robotics that address problems including but not limited to swarm perception, communication, localization, mapping, motion planning, motion control, human–swarm interactions, simulation platforms, and robotic platforms.

Prof. Dr. Goldie Nejat
Prof. Dr. Beno Benhabib
Guest Editors

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