Swarm robotics

Related papers: 20

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Swarm robotics is a field of robotics that coordinates large numbers of relatively simple, autonomous robots to collectively accomplish tasks that would be difficult or impossible for a single robot. Inspired by the self-organizing behavior of biological systems — such as ant colonies, bird flocks, and fish schools — swarm robots operate through local interactions and decentralized control rather than relying on a central commander or global knowledge. Each robot follows straightforward rules, yet the group exhibits sophisticated emergent behaviors such as collective navigation, self-assembly, foraging, and formation control. In AI and robotics research, swarm systems are studied through frameworks like particle swarm optimization, stigmergy, and evolutionary algorithms to design and refine these collective strategies. Swarm robotics matters because it offers scalability, robustness, and fault tolerance — if individual robots fail, the swarm continues functioning. These properties make swarm systems highly promising for real-world applications including search and rescue, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and exploration of hazardous or cluttered environments where deploying a single capable robot would be impractical.

Top Cited Papers

A new optimizer using particle swarm theory

R.C. Eberhart, James Kennedy

Citations: 14853 • 2002

Swarm Intelligence

Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo, Guy Théraulaz

Citations: 6404 • 1999

Swarm robotics: a review from the swarm engineering perspective

Manuele Brambilla, Eliseo Ferrante, Mauro Birattari, Marco Dorigo

Citations: 1708 • 2013

Evolutionary Robotics

Stefano Nolfi, Dario Floreano

Citations: 1514 • 2000

Programmable self-assembly in a thousand-robot swarm

Michael Rubenstein, Alejandro Donohué-Cornejo, Radhika Nagpal

Citations: 1238 • 2014

Swarm Intelligence in Cellular Robotic Systems

G. Beni, Jing Wang

Citations: 965 • 1993

Swarm Robotics: From Sources of Inspiration to Domains of Application

Erol Şahi̇n

Citations: 945 • 2005

A Survey on Aerial Swarm Robotics

Soon‐Jo Chung, Aditya A. Paranjape, Philip Dames, Shaojie Shen, Vijay Kumar

Citations: 634 • 2018

Kilobot: A low cost scalable robot system for collective behaviors

Michael Rubenstein, Christian Ahler, Radhika Nagpal

Citations: 621 • 2012

Swarm of micro flying robots in the wild

Xin Zhou, Xiangyong Wen, Zhepei Wang, Yuman Gao, Haojia Li, Qianhao Wang, Tiankai Yang, Haojian Lu, Yanjun Cao, Chao Xu, Fei Gao

Citations: 539 • 2022

Bio-inspired artificial intelligence: theories, methods, and technologies

Citations: 505 • 2009

Swarm Robotic Behaviors and Current Applications

Melanie Schranz, Martina Umlauft, Micha Sende, Wilfried Elmenreich

Citations: 439 • 2020

A review of swarm robotics tasks

Levent Bayındır

Citations: 434 • 2015

Swarmanoid: A Novel Concept for the Study of Heterogeneous Robotic Swarms

Marco Dorigo, Dario Floreano, Luca Maria Gambardella, Francesco Mondada, Stefano Nolfi, Tarek Baaboura, Mauro Birattari, Michaël Bonani, Manuele Brambilla, Arne Brutschy, Daniel Burnier, Alexandre Campo, Anders Lyhne Christensen, Antal Decugniere, Gianni A. Di, Frederick Ducatelle, Eliseo Ferrante, Alexander Förster, J. M. Gonzáles, Jérôme Guzzi, Valentin Longchamp, Stéphane Magnenat, Nithin Mathews, Marco Montes de, Rehan O’Grady, Carlo Pinciroli, Giovanni Pini, Philippe Rétornaz, James F. Roberts, Valerio Sperati, Timothy Stirling, Alessandro Stranieri, Thomas Stützle, Vito Trianni, Elio Tuci, Ali Emre Turgut, Florian Vaussard

Citations: 408 • 2013

Stigmergy, Self-Organization, and Sorting in Collective Robotics

Owen Holland, Chris Melhuish

Citations: 406 • 1999

Human Interaction With Robot Swarms: A Survey

Andreas Kolling, Phillip Walker, Nilanjan Chakraborty, Katia Sycara, Michael Lewis

Citations: 401 • 2015

Interaction and Intelligent Behavior.

Maja J. Matarić

Citations: 388 • 1994

Region-based shape control for a swarm of robots

Chien Chern Cheah, Saing Paul Hou, J.-J.E. Slotine

Citations: 387 • 2009

From Swarm Intelligence to Swarm Robotics

G. Beni

Citations: 376 • 2005

Swarm Robotics: Past, Present, and Future [Point of View]

Marco Dorigo, Guy Théraulaz, Vito Trianni

Citations: 363 • 2021