Investigation on communication aspects of multiple swarm networked robotics

Abstract

Swarm robotics is an emerging field of robotics and is envisioned to play a vital role in surveillance andsearch/rescue operations. Most of the existing works on swarm networked robotics address the problem of formationmovement or the communication aspects within a swarm. However, none of the existing works consider multiple swarms.Even for the case of single swarms, researchers use unrealistic assumptions with respect to communication, leading tounrealistic results. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of multiple swarms considering realistic assumptions withrespect to communication. To the best of our knowledge, it will be the first time where the performance is evaluatedfor the case of multiple swarms while considering realistic assumptions with respect to communication. Our simulationresults shed light on the roles of three different types of communication associated with multiple swarms with respect tomultiple performance metrics.