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Evolutionary algorithms offer great promise for the automatic design of robot bodies, tailoring them to specific environments or tasks. Most research is done on simplified models or virtual robots in physics simulators, which do not capture…
We present an algorithm to solve the problem of locating the source, or maxima, of a scalar field using a robot swarm. We demonstrate how the robot swarm determines its direction of movement to approach the source using only field intensity…
Swarms are highly robust systems that offer unique benefits compared to their alternatives. In this work, we propose a bio-inspired and artificial potential field-driven robot swarm control method, where the swarm formation dynamics are…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
Swarm robots, inspired by the emergence of animal herds, are robots that assemble a large number of modules and self-organize themselves to form specific morphologies and exhibit specific functions. These modular robots perform relatively…
We present a method for the control of robot swarms using two subsets of robots: a larger group of simple, oblivious robots (which we call the workers) that is governed by simple local attraction forces, and a smaller group (the guides)…
Modern cities are growing ecosystems that face new challenges due to the increasing population demands. One of the many problems they face nowadays is waste management, which has become a pressing issue requiring new solutions. Swarm…
The coordination of robot swarms - large decentralized teams of robots - generally relies on robust and efficient inter-robot communication. Maintaining communication between robots is particularly challenging in field deployments.…
A robotic swarm that is required to operate for long periods in a potentially unknown environment can use both evolution and individual learning methods in order to adapt. However, the role played by the environment in influencing the…
We consider the following variant of the two dimensional gathering problem for swarms of robots: Given a swarm of $n$ indistinguishable, point shaped robots on a two dimensional grid. Initially, the robots form a closed chain on the grid…
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…
Swarm robotics is a promising approach for the coordination of large numbers of robots. While previous studies have shown that evolutionary robotics techniques can be applied to obtain robust and efficient self-organized behaviors for robot…
A swarm robotic system consists of a team of robots performing cooperative tasks without any centralized coordination. In principle, swarms enable flexible and scalable solutions; however, designing individual control algorithms that can…
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…
In this paper we describe a novel local algorithm for large statistical swarms using "harmonic attractor dynamics", by means of which a swarm can construct harmonics of the environment. This in turn allows the swarm to approximately…
Robot swarms often exhibit emergent behaviors that are fascinating to observe; however, it is often difficult to predict what swarm behaviors can emerge under a given set of agent capabilities. We seek to efficiently leverage human input to…
This paper proposes a novel swarm-based control algorithm for exploration and coverage of unknown environments, while maintaining a formation that permits short-range communication. The algorithm combines two elements: swarm rules for…
The self-organization of robots for the formation of structures and shapes is a stimulating application of the swarm robotic system. It involves a large number of autonomous robots of heterogeneous behavior, coordination among them, and…
Different from most of the formation strategies where robots require unique labels to identify topological neighbors to satisfy the predefined shape constraints, we here study the problem of identity-less distributed shape formation in…
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…