Exploring Algorithmic Options for the Efficient Design and Reconfiguration of Reactive Robot Swarms

A key challenge in robot swarm engineering is the design of individual robot controllers such that the robots as a group can perform a specified task. In this paper, we explore algorithmic options for designing and reconfiguring swarms of synchronous reactive robots to perform a joint navigation / morphogenesis task in a known world. Our results show that neither of these problems can be solved both efficiently and correctly either in general or relative to a surprisingly large number of restrictions on robot and swarm architecture. We also give restrictions under which these problems can be solved both efficiently and correctly.