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.

Melanie Schranz is a senior researcher and project leader at Lakeside Labs. Prior to this, she received a PhD from the University of Klagenfurt, Austria in 2015, entitled ＂Design Space Exploration for Coordination and Control Strategies in Visual Sensor Networks＂. From 2011 to 2015 she worked as research and teaching staff member at the research group Pervasive Computing at the institute for Networked and Embedded Systems, University of Klagenfurt, Austria. From 2015 to 2017 she worked as innovation manager at the UPPERCUT group, Klagenfurt, Austria. She returned to academic life in January 2017 as senior researcher to the non-profit research organization Lakeside Labs. Melanie’s major research interests cover swarm intelligence algorithms, coordination and control algorithms for sensor networks, and their (graphical) simulations. She successfully supervised several bachelor and master students, and was strongly involved in the foundation of a spin-off company (Sensolligent, 2018). As a senior researcher and project manager at Lakeside Labs, Dr. Schranz has made impactful contributions to swarm intelligence. Her extensive research has been published in leading journals and presented at prominent conferences. She is a reviewer for multiple conferences/journals including the International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and the IEEE International Conference on Network Protocol, Cloude-Edge Continuum Workshop just to name a few, and American Control Conference. In addition, Dr. Schranz brings valuable teaching experience from her time at the University of Klagenfurt, where she has instructed courses in pervasive computing, digital signal processing, and sensor networks.

Wilfried Elmenreich is Professor of Smart Grids at the Institute of Networked and Embedded Systems at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. He studied computer science at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria and in 2008 received the venia docendi for technical computer science. In 2007 he moved to the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria as Senior Researcher. After a visiting professorship at the University of Passau Elmenreich in 2013, he followed the call to the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He has authored several books and has written over 200 articles in the field of networked and embedded systems. Elmenreich researches intelligent energy systems, self-organizing systems and technical applications of swarm intelligence.

Farshad Arvin is a Professor of Robotics at the University of Durham, UK. He earned his BSc in Computer Engineering in 2004, MSc in Computer Systems Engineering in 2010, and PhD in Computer Science in 2015. After completing his PhD, he joined the University of Manchester as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. He was appointed Assistant Professor in Robotics in 2018 and promoted to Associate Professor in 2021. In 2022, he relocated his lab to the University of Durham. Farshad has been a senior visiting research scholar at several leading institutes, including the Artificial Life Laboratory at the University of Graz, the Institute of Microelectronics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, Italy. His research interests focus on Swarm Robotics and Biohybrid Robotics. He is the founding director of the Swarm & Computational Intelligence Laboratory (SwaCIL), formed in 2018.