Swarm Robotics: A Review from the Swarm Engineering Perspective

Source: PDF mirror Authors: Manuele Brambilla, Eliseo Ferrante, Mauro Birattari, Marco Dorigo Date: 2013-01-17 Venue: Swarm Intelligence 7

Key points

• Reviews swarm robotics as coordination through simple local rules and local interactions rather than centralized command.
• Names the usual benefits as robustness, scalability, and flexibility, all of which derive from redundancy, local sensing, and the absence of a leader.
• Frames swarm coordination as an engineering discipline, not just a biological analogy, with explicit concern for design methods, verification, and maintenance.
• Also notes the limits: top-down design remains difficult, real-world applications are sparse, and requirement modeling for swarms is still underdeveloped.