A Review: Pattern Formation and Adaptation in Multi-Robot Systems
Bahceci Erkin, Soysal Onur, Sahin Erol

Abstract:

Recent advances in robotics have started making it feasible to deploy large numbers of inexpensive robots for tasks such as surveillance and search. However, coordination of multiple robots to accomplish such tasks remains a challenging problem. This report reviews some of the recent literature in multi-robot systems. It consists of two parts. In the first part, we reviewed the studies on the pattern formation problem, that is how can a group of robots be controlled to get into and maintain a formation. The second part reviews the studies that used adaptation strategies in controlling multi-robot systems. Specifically we have investigated (1) how learning (life-long adaptation) is used to make multi-robot systems respond to changes in the environment as well in the capabilities of individual robots, and (2) how evolution is used to generate group behaviors.