Related papers: Programmable collective behavior in dynamically se…

Current developments in molecular electronics, motors and chemical sensors could enable constructing large numbers of devices able to sense, compute and act in micron-scale environments. Such microscopic machines, of sizes comparable to…

Representation and control of the dynamics of stigmergic substances used by bio-inspired approaches is a challenge when applied to robotics. In order to overcome this challenge, this work proposes a model to coordinate swarms of robots…

In densely populated environments, socially compliant navigation is critical for autonomous robots as driving close to people is unavoidable. This manner of social navigation is challenging given the constraints of human comfort and social…

This study proposes an event-based reconfiguration control to navigate a robot swarm through challenging environments with narrow passages such as valleys, tunnels, and corridors. The robot swarm is modeled as an undirected graph, where…

One of the main tasks for autonomous robot swarms is to collectively decide on the best available option. Achieving that requires a high quality communication between the agents that may not be always available in a real world environment.…

The giant single-celled slime mould Physarum polycephalum exhibits complex morphological adaptation and amoeboid movement as it forages for food and may be seen as a minimal example of complex robotic behaviour. Swarm computation has…

In this paper, we present a control framework that allows magnetic microrobot teams to accomplish complex micromanipulation tasks captured by global Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas. To address this problem, we propose an optimal…

Serially connected robots are promising candidates for performing tasks in confined spaces such as search-and-rescue in large-scale disasters. Such robots are typically limbless, and we hypothesize that the addition of limbs could improve…

This paper presents an approach to externally influencing a team of robots by means of time-varying density functions. These density functions represent rough references for where the robots should be located. To this end, a continuous-time…

With the increasing presence of social robots in various environments and applications, there is an increasing need for these robots to exhibit socially-compliant behaviors. Legible motion, characterized by the ability of a robot to clearly…

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…

When individual robots have limited sensing capabilities or insufficient fault tolerance, it becomes necessary for multiple robots to form teams during exploration, thereby increasing the collective observation range and reliability.…

We present a model of soft active particles that leads to a rich array of collective behavior found also in dense biological swarms of bacteria and other unicellular organisms. Our model uses only local interactions, such as Vicsek-type…

Despite progress developing experimentally-consistent models of insect in-flight sensing and feedback for individual agents, a lack of systematic understanding of the multi-agent and group performance of the resulting bio-inspired sensing…

Collective animal movement fascinates children and scientists alike. One of the most commonly given explanations for collective animal movement is improved foraging. Animals are hypothesized to gain from searching for food in groups. Here,…

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…

Swarm systems consist of large numbers of robots that collaborate autonomously. With an appropriate level of human control, swarm systems could be applied in a variety of contexts ranging from search-and-rescue situations to Cyber defence.…

Collective behavior models, such as aggregation and flocking, usually assume self-propelled robots that can directly execute their desired speed and direction of motion without fundamental constraints. However, autonomous sailing robots…

Modular robots can be rearranged into a new design, perhaps each day, to handle a wide variety of tasks by forming a customized robot for each new task. However, reconfiguring just the mechanism is not sufficient: each design also requires…

This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…