Centralized sensing and control of multiple mobile robots

We discuss the development ideas and merits of a single centralized station to provide supervision, sensing, control, intelligence and perhaps power to a colony of robots, organized for the performance of specific tasks. The consequence of such an approach is that each robot can be much simpler, smaller and less expensive, since no on-board sensing, control and intelligence are required. The issues to be studied concern tradeoffs in control (bandwidth, accuracy, channel capacity); relations between numbers of controllable robots and task suitability and representation for control.