Energy efficient large scale multi-robot systems

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The logistics of energy supply will dominate the practicality of any robot system at sufficiently large scale. Therefore, improving the efficiency with which energy can be supplied and used could have a significant impact on the size and nature of tasks achieved by robots. To explore this idea, I propose to investigate methods for maintaining complete mobile robot systems with populations of up to 100,000 - three orders of magnitude larger than typical in the field. The experimental domain is autonomous mobile robot foraging and transporation: a model for many real-world applications. The key problems to be studied are (i) how to effectively distribute energy to individual robots; and (ii) how the robots can use their stored energy efficiently.