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An introduction to swarming robotics: application development trends

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Abstract

Animals help to sustain the environment’s life cycle and ecosystem. Without human intervention, these creatures carry out their ‘spontaneous routine’ jobs and contribute towards balance in nature. Any natural system that congregates as a result of some form of collective intelligence of nature is also known as swarm intelligence (SI). This metaphor inspires a variety of techniques to solve the problem of calculating, in most cases dealing with optimization problems and has sparked interest amongst scientists. It is very trying for a new researcher to understand the whole concept of swarming robotics (SR) and optimization algorithm (i.e. realizing the idea from animal’s perception to the SR application). In addition, the existing algorithms are computationally complicated, difficult to be understood by beginners as there are too many parameters. Thus, in this paper, we simplify the three branches of the main applications which are frequently used for SI namely: (1) optimization and networks design, (2) prediction and forecasting, and (3) SR. This paper summarizes the basic understanding overview of swarming robotics and discusses their basic concepts and principles.

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Acknowledgments

This research was sponsored by the National Oceanography Department, Malaysia, under Grants NOD-USM 6050124 and USM Research University, under Grant 1001/PELECT/814059.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Underwater Robotics Research Group (URRG), School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 , Nibong Tebal, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

    Z. Z. Abidin & M. R. Arshad

  2. Imaging and Computational Intelligence Research Group (ICI), School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 , Nibong Tebal, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

    U. K. Ngah

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  1. Z. Z. Abidin
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  2. M. R. Arshad
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  3. U. K. Ngah
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Correspondence to Z. Z. Abidin.

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Abidin, Z.Z., Arshad, M.R. & Ngah, U.K. An introduction to swarming robotics: application development trends. Artif Intell Rev 43, 501–514 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-013-9397-8

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