Evolutionary Swarm Robotics: a theoretical and methodological itinerary from individual neuro-controllers to collective behaviours

In the last decade, swarm robotics gathered much attention in the research community. By drawing inspiration from social insects and other self-organising systems, it focuses on large robot groups featuring distributed control, adaptation, high robustness and flexibility. Various reasons lay behind this interest in similar multi-robot systems. Above all, inspiration comes from the observation of social activities, which are based on concepts like division of labour, cooperation and communication. If societies are organised in such a way in order to be more efficient, then also robotic groups could benefit from similar paradigms.