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Collective behaviors such as swarming and flocking emerge from simple, decentralized interactions in biological systems. Existing models, such as Vicsek and Cucker-Smale, lack collision avoidance, whereas the Olfati-Saber model imposes…
This paper studies the problem of controlling a multi-robot system to achieve a polygon formation in a self-organized manner. Different from the typical formation control strategies where robots are steered to satisfy the predefined control…
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…
Swarming is a conspicuous behavioural trait observed in bird flocks, fish shoals, insect swarms and mammal herds. It is thought to improve collective awareness and offer protection from predators. Many current models involve the hypothesis…
Morphological computing, the use of the physical design of a robot to ease the realization of a given task has been proven to be a relevant concept in the context of swarm robotics. Here we demonstrate both experimentally and numerically,…
The deployment of simple emergent behaviors in swarm robotics has been well-rehearsed in the literature. A recent study has shown how self-aggregation is possible in a multitask approach -- where multiple self-aggregation task instances…
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…
The pattern formation task is commonly seen in a multi-robot system. In this paper, we study the problem of forming complex shapes with functionally limited mobile robots, which have to rely on other robots to precisely locate themselves.…
Multi-robot formation control enables robots to cooperate as a working group in completing complex tasks, which has been widely used in both civilian and military scenarios. Before moving to reach a given formation, each robot should choose…
Interacting individuals in complex systems often give rise to coherent motion exhibiting coordinated global structures. Such phenomena are ubiquitously observed in nature, from cell migration, bacterial swarms, animal and insect groups, and…
Swarm robotics has experienced a rapid expansion in recent years, primarily fueled by specialized multi-robot systems developed to achieve dedicated collective actions. These specialized platforms are in general designed with swarming…
Cooperative transport is a striking phenomenon where multiple agents join forces to transit a payload too heavy for the individual. While social animals such as ants are routinely observed to coordinate transport at scale, reproducing the…
Collective decision-making is an essential capability of large-scale multi-robot systems to establish autonomy on the swarm level. A large portion of literature on collective decision-making in swarm robotics focuses on discrete decisions…
A leader-follower framework is proposed for multi-robot navigation of large scale teams where the leader agents corral the follower agents. A group of leaders is modeled as a 2D deformable object where discrete masses (i.e., leader robots)…
This paper presents a decentralized leader-follower multi-robot formation control based on a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm applied to a swarm of small educational Sphero robots. Since the basic Q-learning method is known to require…
Due to its decentralised, distributed and scalable nature, swarm robotics has great potential for applications ranging from agriculture to environmental monitoring and logistics. Various swarm control methods and algorithms are currently…
In this paper, we introduce a novel adaptation of the Raft consensus algorithm for achieving emergent formation control in multi-agent systems with a single integrator dynamics. This strategy, dubbed "Rafting," enables robust cooperation…
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…
Micro- and molecular-robotic systems act as large-scale swarms. Capabilities of sensing, communication and information processing are very limited on these scales. This short position paper describes a swarm-based minimalistic approach,…
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,…