Engineering Swarms of Cyber-Physical Systems

Engineering Swarms for Cyber-Physical Systems covers the whole design cycle for applying swarm intelligence in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and guides readers through modeling, design, simulation, and final deployment of swarm systems. The book provides a one-stop-shop covering all relevant aspects for engineering swarm systems. Following a concise introduction part on swarm intelligence and the potential of swarm systems, the book explains modeling methods for swarm systems embodied in the interplay of physical swarm agents. Examples from several domains including robotics, manufacturing, and search and rescue applications are given. In addition, swarm robotics is further covered by an analysis of available platforms, computation models and applications. It also treats design methods for cyber-physical swarm applications including swarm modeling approaches for CPSs and classical implementations of behaviors as well as approaches based on machine-learning. A chapter on simulation covers simulation requirements and addresses the dichotomy between abstract and detailed physical simulation models. A special feature of the chapters is the hands-on character by providing programming examples with the different engineering aspects whenever possible, thus allowing for fast translation of concepts to actual implementation. Overall, the book is meant to give a creative researcher or engineer the inspiration, theoretical background, and practical knowledge to build swarm systems of CPSs. It also serves as a text for students in science and engineering.