Coordinating heterogeneous swarms through minimal communication among homogeneous sub-swarms

Abstract

In swarm robotics, the agents are often assumed to be identical. In this abstract, we argue that the cooperation between swarms of different kinds of robots can enhance the capabilities of the robotic system-heterogeneous swarms marry the robustness and parallelism of homogeneous swarms with efficient task specialisation. A key issue in heterogeneous swarm systems is the potential complexity of facilitating cooperation between the different robot types. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.