Heterogeneity in Multi-Robot Systems

Multi-robot collaborative systems are an integral part of any large scale operation. Even more the heterogeneity of the team while opening up great opportunities - different viewpoints, traversability constraints, battery life extension, at the same time creates a new dimensionality of difficulty. Increasing interest in using heterogeneous systems has resulted in numerous works in the literature, nevertheless these solutions tend to divide and conquer - divide tasks for each type of robot and solve for a homogenous system. Moreover, we see very few real world demonstrations in academia and the industry of deploying teams of heterogeneous robots.

The main questions we want to address in this workshop are: is it possible to mathematically define heterogeneity of the system, what is the role of learning in such systems, what does heterogeneity bring into the table, what are the successful real world examples of these systems and what we can learn from these case studies. This workshop aims to bring together a group of researchers both from academia and industry to discuss these problems. We want to open a conversation between industry practitioners and researchers to highlight the fundamental issues faced in the heterogeneous multi-robot system design and deployment.

In-person Venue: London, UK

Remote Participation Link: Zoom link