Vision
As machines become more intelligent, we would see robots working individually on tasks. The next obvious challenge would be to make it easy for the robots to collaborate, share observations, and take decisions. This collaboration can happen within humanoids, or drones, or satellite, and type of autonomous robotic system.
A swarm of drones can be used in industries like defence, agriculture, surveillance, and logistical use cases.
Similarly, a swarm of satellites can help us assemble the next space station, adjust satellite orbits, or clean up junk. Rovers on the surface of Moon or Mars can collaborate to build basic infrastructure till humans touchdown.
All vehicles within a city may communicate with each other while autonomous driving — honking becomes obsolete when machines drive themselves.
Vending machines, factory warehouses, ATMs can communicate with each other and with humans about inventory depletions or forecasts.
There are countless reasons why machines will have to collaborate in future! And to fuel this collaboration, we will require a standardised Swarm Intelligence.
What is Swarm Intelligence
Swarm Intelligence is a software-hardware communication and planning interface that builds efficiency required for robotic networks to carry out physical tasks.
The general definition of swarm intelligence will include:
- Ability for multiple autonomous robotic systems to connect in a peer-to-peer network.
- Ability to establish centralised control over the swarm’s mission, targets, route plans, or other behaviours.
- Ability to sustain decentralised control to take actions required for completing the missions.
- Implementing rerouting, replanning algorithms to solve common obstacles on mission.
- Ability to tag replacement robots in cases of charging, fuelling, or downtime and maintain a stable network.
- General purpose implementation to work with any type of robotic swarms with minimal over the top improvements.
Market and Niche
| TAM | SAM | SOM | Players | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | $87.1 billion | $13.07 billion | $653 million | Swarmbotics AI, ASI, Clearpath Robotics |
| Defence | $31.6 billion | $4.75 billion | $237 million | Anduril, Scout AI |
| Agriculture | $14.7 billion | $1.47 billion | $73 million | Tevel Aerobotics, Robotic Research, Israel Aerospace, Sony Group, SwarmFarm Robotics |
| Space | $5.41 billion | $0.54 billion | $54 million | Swarm Technologies, EnduroSat |