Lecture 13B: Swarm Robotics

Question 1

What is swarm robotics?

Answer 1

Swarm robotics is the study of how independent robots can interact as a group.

Question 2

What are two principles of swarm robotics?

Answer 2

From microscale interaction (local) to macroscale structures (global)

Principles of self-organisation (feedback, fluctuations)

Question 3

Why is swarm robotics important?

Answer 3

Because it targets maximal scalability

Higher fault tolerance due to the system’s redundancy

Question 4

How is swarm robotics linked to Ant Colony Optimisation?

Answer 4

Ants can find the shortest path without visual clues, therefore they are good for the travelling salesman problem. They have some memory and are not completely blind.

Question 5

What are two examples of swarm robotics?

Answer 5

Kilobot is a large scale swarm; tiny robots.

Swarm robotics used for the construction of ramps.

“subCULTron” for lagoon monitoring.

“SAGA” project for swarm of quadrotor UAVs.

Question 6

How can Evolutionary Robots and Swarm Robots be linked?

Answer 6

Robotcs can evolve to exhibit swarm behaviour, promoting collaborative robots.

Question 7

What is swarm coginition?

Answer 7

Swarm cognition is the study of collective behaviour in swarms from the perspective of cognitive sciences. It encompasses collective perception, memory, learning, and decision making.

Question 8

What are two examples of collective decision-making in swarm robots?

Answer 8

Majority rule (picks the least voted for option) or voter rule (selects random option)