Mobile Bot Swarms They're closer than you might think!

Quadcopters and their kin are developing rapidly, and bee-sized versions are currently being contemplated. An exciting vision for the Internet of Things (IoT) is a swarm of flying bots (robotic bees) that can provide a huge collective intelligence for gathering information. However, this vision cannot be implemented yet because the swarm requires new methods for delivering power to the bots and new architectures for aggregating primitive information into collective intelligence. Accordingly, the practical systems of today will comprise a single bot operating in a neighborhood. Building on those systems, we may learn how to create infrastructures in support of swarms of bots that could service a city, state, or country. We will also see that a powerful synergy could be created between a more capable single bot and a swarm of less capable but ubiquitous bots. © 2012 IEEE.