Self-organized aggregation with physical interaction

Abstract

Compared with individual robots, collaborated robot swarms can perform more complicated tasks. Many of these tasks require the aggregation of robots in applications of robot swarm systems. Though ubiquitous in natural swarms, self-organized aggregation in low-cost robot swarms is still challenging. Here, we reported a self-organized aggregation method using physical interactions. This method does not require on-board computing and communication within swarms. Via coding the physical interactions among robots, such as the attraction between magnets, the swarms will aggregate together. Experimental results demonstrated that this method can bring at least 15 robots together autonomously. This method is easy to scale-up and has the potential to apply in real applications of large-scale robot swarm system.