Using Hardware Specialization and Hierarchy to Simplify Robotic Swarms

Specialization has always been a tool for work distribution and simplification in nature and in distributed robotics. We present a novel approach to use hardware specialization hierarchically to enhance the capabilities of a swarm without increasing complexity, allowing a numerous group of robots to benefit from the extended features of a few to complete a task that was impossible for them before. We tested the concept under a simulated environment with a classical distributed robotics problem, shape formation, and validated the simulated results against a real experiment.