The I-SWARM project

This paper describes the initial work of the EC-funded project I-SWARM which aims to take a leap forward in robotics research, in distributed and adaptive systems as well as in understanding self-organizing biological swarm systems. The next step from today's micro robotics research will be the mass-production of micro robots, which can then be employed as a "real" swarm consisting of up to 1,000 robot clients. These clients will all be equipped with limited, pre-rational on-board intelligence. The swarm will consist of a huge number of heterogeneous robots, differing in the type of sensors, manipulators and computational power or behaviours and programs. Such a robot swarm can be employed for a variety of applications, including micro assembly nano-handling, biological, medical or cleaning tasks