Strategies for Collective Minimalist Mobile Robots

An important title in the 'Engineering Research Series',Strategies for Collective Minimalist Mobile Robots presentsresearch on one of the most exciting areas of technology associatedwith robotics ? co-ordinated teams, or groups, of tinyrobots. These act colonially and behave as a body, or collect dataindividually, to feed information to a single data retrieval point,offering a network of information. Intercommunication between many tiny robots allows for problemareas to be detected and concentrated upon, bringing the pack ofrobots together.The developments and research reported here show the ways inwhich engineers are trying to mimic biological systems andbehaviour to find solutions to engineering problems. DrMelhuish?s research aims to analyse various naturallyoccurring collective systems as models for robotic systemdevelopment. He applied the results of observations of biologicalsystem behaviour among social insects, such as ants, to robotactivity. Much of Strategies for Collective Minimalist MobileRobots is concerned with a review of the remarkableachievements of groups of simple insects and the observation thatcollective achievement can far exceed the sum of individualperformances. Although at an early stage of development andmanagement, collective robotic technology has created a high levelof interest from those involved in R & D among professionalengineers.COMPLETE CONTENTS:IntroductionBackground, issues, and related workMinimalist locomotionCollective minimalist movementMinimalist regulation of group sizeCollective minimalist action on the environmentCollective minimalist clusteringCollective minimalist sorting and segregationConclusions and further work.