ZRush – a hybrid control system for robot swarms

Swarm Robotics is an emerging field of adapting the phenomenon of natural swarms to robotics. It is a study of robots that are aimed to mimic natural swarms, like ants and birds, to form a system that is scalable, flexible, and robust. These robots show self-organization, autonomy, cooperation, and coordination amongst themselves. Benefits of swarms over traditional robotics include fault tolerance, scalability, operational efficiency, and ability to operate in dangerous or hazardous environments. 

We have taken inspiration from popular RTS (real-time strategy) games, such as StarCraft and Age of Empires, which have successfully used swarm intelligence and multi-agent AI systems in the past 20+ years.

ZRush aims to extend the same mechanics and user experience to real-world practical applications by designing a control system for swarms of robots that combines autonomous swarm behaviour with human piloting and decision-making. The control system focusses on precision, reliability, and flexibility and aims at overcoming the issues that currently limit the use of robot swarms in real-life scenarios.