Robot cooperation and swarm intelligence

This chapter is devoted to illustrate and characterize the relationship between Swarm Intelligence and cooperation among robots. Individuals with very limited computational capabilities are able to carry out very complex tasks when they can work together. From a methodological point of view, Swarm Intelligence is a set of heuristic solutions inspired by animal swarm behaviors and capable to offer empirical solutions to many computationally hard problems pertaining to several disciplines. In this chapter, we will try to outline the main research directions in Swarm Intelligence implementation within a robot network through the cooperation among the robots. The latter topic will be presented along with its advantages, issues and challenges. The convergence of robot cooperation and Swarm Intelligence is leading towards a new discipline, called Swarm Robotics. In this chapter, we will introduce this new field of study, its most relevant works and its main research directions.