The concept of robot society and its utilisation in future robotics

Societies are formed as collaborating structures to execute tasks which are not possible or are difficult for individuals alone. There are many types of biological societies, but societies formed by machines or robots exist only in laboratories at the moment. The concept offers, however, interesting possibilities especially in applications where a long-term fully autonomous operation is needed and/or the work to be done can be executed in a parallel way by a group of individuals. This chapter introduces the basic control and communication structures for robot societies by using a model society. Also a mini-scaled mobile robot which is under construction, and will be duplicated for testing as a physical society demonstrator, is introduced. Simulation results illustrating the behaviour of the model society are given. Some potential applications are introduced and discussed.