Khawalid, A., Acristinii, D., van Toor, H., & Castelló Ferrer, E. (2019). Grex: A Decentralized Hive Mind. Ledger, 4. doi:https://doi.org/10.5195/ledger.2019.176

Abstract

Swarm Robotics (SR) faces a series of challenges impeding widespread adoption for real-world applications. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has shown it can solve a number of these challenges. An experiment was conducted to showcase the resolution of these challenges. A search and rescue mission was simulated using drones coupled with single board computers and several simulated agents. Inter-agent communications were facilitated through DLT in a completely decentralized network. A frontend interface was built to demonstrate the ease with which information can be extracted from the system. This paper shows the feasibility of the application of DLT to SR-related challenges in a practical experiment. For future work, it is proposed to focus on more complex tasks through federated learning or inter-swarm communications, possibly through Cosmos.