The concept of robot society and its utilization

Societies are formed as collaborative structures to execute tasks which are not possible or are difficult for individuals alone. There are many types of biological societies, but societies formed by machines or robots are still rare. The concept offers, however, interesting possibilities especially in applications where a long term fully autonomous operation is needed and/or the work to be done can be executed in a parallel way by a group of individuals. The paper introduces the basic control and communication structures of robot societies by using a model society. Also, a mini-scaled mobile robot which is under construction to be multiplied for the corresponding physical society demonstrator is introduced. Simulation results illustrating the behaviour of the model society are given. Possible applications in waste treatment and process monitoring and cleaning are considered.<
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