Cooperation in a swarm of robots using RFID landmarks

Abstract

In a world that is giving prominence to ubiquitous computing, a classical standalone robot, though as complex, specialised and effcient as it may be, is not suitable for a distributed environment. The aim is to have knowledge and computing power diffused in the environment, exploiting the collaboration of simple, exible and cost-effective robots. Collective intelligence increases when each one communicates basic information about its local state, to update the global knowledge. An open research problem is the cooperation among multiple entities in a distributed environment. Our proposal is to have robots with low capabilities that can learn information and instructions from on-site RFID landmarks to place themselves information, synchronise with other robots in the area, and nally carry out a cooperative task. © 2008 IEEE.