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Automatic off-line design is an attractive approach to implementing robot swarms. In this approach, a designer specifies a mission for the swarm, and an optimization process generates suitable control software for the individual robots…

While conventional reinforcement learning focuses on designing agents that can perform one task, meta-learning aims, instead, to solve the problem of designing agents that can generalize to different tasks (e.g., environments, obstacles,…

Many new methodologies for the control of large-scale multi-agent systems are based on macroscopic representations of the emerging system dynamics, in the form of continuum approximations of large ensembles. These techniques, that are…

Social insects in nature such as ants, termites and bees construct their colonies collaboratively in a very efficient process. In these swarms, each insect contributes to the construction task individually showing redundant and parallel…

We present a decentralized and scalable approach for deployment of a robot swarm. Our approach tackles scenarios in which the swarm must reach multiple spatially distributed targets, and enforce the constraint that the robot network cannot…

In swarm robotics, just as for an animal swarm in Nature, one of the aims is to reach and maintain a desired configuration. One of the possibilities for the team, to reach this aim, is to see what its neighbours are doing. This approach…

Applications of large-scale mobile multi-robot systems can be beneficial over monolithic robots because of higher potential for robustness and scalability. Developing controllers for multi-robot systems is challenging because the multitude…

In comparison with existing approaches, which struggle with scalability, communication dependency, and robustness against dynamic failures, cooperative aerial transportation via robot swarms holds transformative potential for logistics and…

One of the most important promises of decentralized systems is scalability, which is often assumed to be present in robot swarm systems without being contested. Simple limitations, such as movement congestion and communication conflicts,…

Human-swarm interaction is facilitated by a low-dimensional encoding of the swarm formation, independent of the (possibly large) number of robots. We propose using image moments to encode two-dimensional formations of robots. Each robot…

As learning-based methods make their way from perception systems to planning/control stacks, robot control systems have started to enjoy the benefits that data-driven methods provide. Because control systems directly affect the motion of…

While social robots are developed to provide assistance to users through social interactions, their behaviors are dominantly pre-programmed and remote-controlled. Despite the numerous robot control architectures being developed, very few…

Autonomous swarms of robots can bring robustness, scalability and adaptability to safety-critical tasks such as search and rescue but their application is still very limited. Using semi-autonomous swarms with human control can bring robot…

Building a distributed spatial awareness within a swarm of locally sensing and communicating robots enables new swarm algorithms. We use local observations by robots of each other and Gaussian Belief Propagation message passing combined…

We present a set of metrics intended to supplement designer intuitions when designing swarm-robotic systems, increase accuracy in extrapolating swarm behavior from algorithmic descriptions and small test experiments, and lead to faster and…

Micro- and nanorobotics have the potential to revolutionize many applications including targeted material delivery, assembly, and surgery. The same properties that promise breakthrough solutions---small size and large populations---present…

The primary challenge for any autonomous system operating in realistic, rather unconstrained scenarios is to manage the complexity and uncertainty of the real world. While it is unclear how exactly humans and other higher animals master…

We present experimental results on the single file motion of a group of robots interacting with each other through position sensors. We successfully replicate the fundamental diagram typical of these systems, with a transition from free…

We propose a decentralized algorithm to collaboratively transport arbitrarily shaped objects using a swarm of robots. Our approach starts with a task allocation phase that sequentially distributes locations around the object to be…

Swarming systems, such as drone fleets and robotic teams, exhibit complex dynamics driven by both individual behaviors and emergent group-level interactions. Unlike traditional multi-agent domains such as pedestrian crowds or traffic…