Towards Application of Collective Robotics in Industrial Environment

Abstract

The chapter is concerned with a significant area of modern robotics, i.e. multiple robots working as one group, team, swarm or organism. The notion of taxonomy is introduced and an overview of cooperative, networked, swarm and nano-robotics is given. The chapter also analyzes reconfigurable robotics as a tool for improving granularity and adaptive functionality. The development of symbiotic self-reconfigurable systems is discussed and a survey of artificial self-organization is provided. Advantages provided by robots working in collective ways are demonstrated, such as: advanced flexibility and adaptivity; possibilities to evolve behaviours, functions and structures; extended reliability of swarm and symbiotic systems; economic considerations related to agility of enterprises. Finally, emphasis is given paid to a more “difficult issue” which artificial self-organization. It is indicated that technical collective systems may have self-organizing phenomena, despite the fact that they are artificially designed.