RASS: Risk-Aware Swarm Storage

Abstract: In robotics, data acquisition often plays a key part in unknown environment exploration. For example, storing information about the topography of the explored terrain or the natural dangers in the environment can inform the decision-making process of the robots. Therefore, it is crucial to store these data safely and to make it available quickly to the operators of the robotic system. In a decentralized system like a swarm of robots, this entails several challenges. To address them, we propose RASS, a decentralized risk-aware swarm storage and routing mechanism, which relies exclusively on local information sharing between neighbours to establish storage and routing fitness. We test our system through thorough experiments in a physics-based simulator and test its real-world applicability with physical experiments. We obtain convincing reliability, routing speeds, and swarm storage capacity results.