ABSTRACT

When advancing the concept of cooperative robotics, wheremultiple

robotic agents assist each other in the execution of a mission,

one finally arrives at swarm robotics. There does not exist a

hard boundary between the two fields of cooperative and swarm

robotics. However, one regards a collection of cooperative robots

a swarm when the number of agents is sufficiently high so that

swarm principles as observed in nature can be applied. Among

these principles is the noncentralized organization of the swarm.

Hence, it is not sufficient to only increase the number of robot

agents to call a collection of robots a swarm. But, to demonstrate

swarm behavior, the number of agents should be high enough to

permit a sufficient number of coincidental robot-robot interactions

with varying partners, where 100 agents, in standard laboratory

conditions, as a minimum is a reasonable value.