Abstract

Together we achieve more! Is that also true for swarms? Physical and communication interference but also contention can decrease group and swarm performance. We have a look on how to determine good group sizes and on how to make scalability robust. The scalability properties of robot swarms have astonishing similarities to those of distributed computing, communication networks, and even natural systems. With a better understanding of how group performance scales with group size, we can maybe develop more efficient systems and increase the performance of human groups. We end by studying an approach to develop robot swarm systems that scale robustly.

Bio

Heiko Hamann received his doctorate in engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany in 2008. He did his postdoctoral training in modular robotics and evolutionary robotics at the Zoology department of the University of Graz, Austria. From 2013 to 2017 he was assistant professor of swarm robotics at the University of Paderborn, Germany.

Since 2017 he is full professor for service robotics at the University of Lübeck, Germany. His main research interests include swarm robotics, evolutionary robotics, bio-hybrid systems, and modeling of complex systems.