End-to-End Design for Self-Reconfigurable Heterogeneous Robotic Swarms

Abstract

More widespread adoption requires swarms of robots to be more flexible for real-world applications. Multiple challenges remain in complex scenarios where a large amount of data needs to be processed in real-time and high degrees of situational awareness are required. The options in this direction are limited in existing robotic swarms, mostly homogeneous robots with limited operational and reconfiguration flexibility. We address this by bringing elastic computing techniques and dynamic resource management from the edge-cloud computing domain to the swarm robotics domain. This enables the dynamic provisioning of collective capabilities in the swarm for different applications. Therefore, we transform a swarm into a distributed sensing and computing platform capable of complex data processing tasks, which can then be offered as a service. In particular, we discuss how this can be applied to adaptive resource management in a heterogeneous swarm of drones, and how we are implementing the dynamic deployment of distributed data processing algorithms. With an elastic drone swarm built on reconfigurable hardware and containerized services, it will be possible to raise the self-awareness, degree of intelligence, and level of autonomy of heterogeneous swarms of robots. We describe novel directions for collaborative perception, and new ways of interacting with a robotic swarm.

Full text

End-to-End Design for Self-Reconfigurable
Heterogeneous Robotic Swarms
Jorge Pe˜
na Queralta1, Li Qingqing1, Tuan Nguyen Gia1, Hong-Linh Truong2, Tomi Westerlund1
1Turku Intelligent Embedded and Robotic Systems (TIERS) Lab, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
2Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland
Emails: 1{jopequ, qingqli, tunggi, tovewe}@utu.fi, 2linh.truong@aalto.fi
Abstract—More widespread adoption requires swarms of
robots to be more flexible for real-world applications. Multiple
challenges remain in complex scenarios where a large amount
of data needs to be processed in real-time and high degrees of
situational awareness are required. The options in this direction
are limited in existing robotic swarms, mostly homogeneous
robots with limited operational and reconfiguration flexibility.
We address this by bringing elastic computing techniques and
dynamic resource management from the edge-cloud computing
domain to the swarm robotics domain. This enables the dy-
namic provisioning of collective capabilities in the swarm for
different applications. Therefore, we transform a swarm into a
distributed sensing and computing platform capable of complex
data processing tasks, which can then be offered as a service.
In particular, we discuss how this can be applied to adaptive
resource management in a heterogeneous swarm of drones, and
how we are implementing the dynamic deployment of distributed
data processing algorithms. With an elastic drone swarm built
on reconfigurable hardware and containerized services, it will
be possible to raise the self-awareness, degree of intelligence,
and level of autonomy of heterogeneous swarms of robots. We
describe novel directions for collaborative perception, and new
ways of interacting with a robotic swarm.
Index Terms—Swarm Robotics; Edge Computing; Elasticity;
Dynamic Resource Management; Autonomous Robots
I. INTRODUCTION
A recent trend in cyber-physical systems and the Internet
of Things (IoT) domain is to shift towards more distributed
computation, a trend that has crystallized through the edge
computing paradigm [1]. Similarly, recent advances in con-
tainerization, elastic computing, and dynamic resource man-
agement are materializing a decentralized cloud [2], [3]. Mul-
tiple researchers have explored the possibilities of integrating
Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) theory within the IoT and cloud
computing towards IoT MAS and Cloud MAS [4]. On the
other side, the combination of MAS and robotics has brought
swarms of robots with the potential for enhancing human
responses in safety-critical applications such as firefighting [5],
or post-disaster scenarios [6], among others.
We extend these two approaches (swarm robotics and
IoT MAS) towards the intersection of edge computing and
robotics, and argue that with appropriate management and
distribution of computing, sensing and communication re-
sources within a robotic swarm, higher degrees of intelligence
and operational flexibility and robustness can be achieved.
This concept is illustrated in Fig. 1. The capabilities of
robotic swarms are currently limited by different factors, from
the lack of methods and distributed collaborative sensing
Fig. 1: Intelligent and self-reconfigurable robot swarms can
be designed at the intersection of the multi-agent
systems (MAS), Robotics and Edge-Cloud Computing
domains.
algorithms [7], to static and inflexible resource management
with non-optimal utilization of hardware resources due to
separate hardware and software design. This includes em-
bedded hardware with relatively constrained computational
resources due to payload constraints and uniform resources in
swarms [8], [9], [10]. Some previous works have addressed
these limitations through computational offloading and the
definition of edge-cloud robotics architectures [11]. More
recently, heterogeneous robotic swarms have been proposed
to extend the flexibility and intelligence, opening the door to
a wider array of more complex application possibilities [7].
Nonetheless, multiple challenges remain in terms of managing
the collaboration within heterogeneous swarms [12].
A. Related Works
Multiple research efforts within the fields of multi-robot
systems and cloud computing have been directed towards
distributed task allocation and distributed load management.
For instance, autonomous mobile programs (AMPs) were an
early introduction of a dynamic computational load manage-
ment framework [13]. AMPs provided a distributed approach

where autonomous agents were able to make decisions on a
shared computational load, being aware of their own com-
putational capabilities. AMPs share similarities with early
load balancing techniques based and colony optimization
for cloud computing [14]. More recently, multi-agent load
balancing for resource allocation in a distributed computing
environment has been proposed [15]. From the point of view
of task allocation in multi-robot systems, K-means clustering
and auction based mechanisms were introduced in [16]. In
terms of spatial allocation, a workspace partitioning method
was presented in [17] for indoor environments. In our work,
we aim at combining these two approaches considering full
reconfigurability through tight integration of methods from
the edge computing domain and algorithms for cooperation
in multi-robot systems. This is, to the best of our knowledge,
the first paper presenting such an approach.
In our recent works, we have presented initial results to-
wards the definition of reconfigurable robotic swarms. In [18],
we define the concept of resource ensembles from the perspec-
tive of the edge computing domain. This concept serves as
the basis for abstracting edge resources and building dynamic
management models on top of them. From the point of
view of collaborative swarms of robots, we have presented
a blockchain-based approach in [12]. In this work, we uti-
lize a blockchain as a medium for achieving consensus for
bandwidth allocation and data quality ranking in a distributed
multi-robot system. This, again, serves as the starting point
towards distributed sensing and data processing in swarms of
robots, where sensing, network and computational resources
are abstracted and managed through collaborative decision
making.
B. Contribution and Structure
The techniques we propose have a clear impact on swarms
of drones. Current solutions for drone swarms require opera-
tors to either manually control drones or perform analysis of
streamed data at a ground control center. This is a limitation
for the deployment of drones in large areas where there have
been natural disasters such as fires, or where people have gone
missing, as the human resources necessary are too large. Even
if the data is processed by a computer at the ground station,
the need for a high-bandwidth channel between drones and the
base station still limits significantly their operational capabil-
ities. Therefore, there is an evident need for more intelligent
drones that are able to perform data analysis independently
and autonomously navigate large areas. Reconfigurable drone
swarms empower complex edge data analysis at the swarm
level through distributed edge computing. At the same time,
this allows for long-term autonomous operation when energy
constraints allow, as well as reconnaissance in remote areas
with poor network connectivity.
The main objective of this paper is to introduce a new design
approach that enables efficient and dynamic resource man-
agement and autonomous reconfiguration of heterogeneous
robotic swarms (Sections II & III). We discuss the optimization
of the various computing resources and sensing capabilities
of robots in the swarm through a hardware (HW)/software
(SW) co-design approach for the development of specialized
robots. In particular, we incorporate elastic principles for
coordinating and engineering collective capabilities of multiple
heterogeneous robots. This elasticity takes into account the
coordination at the level of multi-agent systems, but also the
specific resources and algorithms utilized for robotic percep-
tion and navigation, among others.
Furthermore, we discuss how our proposed approach en-
ables the reconfiguration of drone swarms and realize a
distributed collective intelligence (Section IV). This requires
embedding intelligence and information processing in the
drones themselves. With current technology, deploying multi-
ple drones requires coordination among their operators, bind-
ing valuable resources from the actual mission. Even more,
when multiple drones are being deployed in parallel [19], [20].
However, neither isolated intelligent drones nor simple task
list orchestration is sufficient [21], [22]. Thus, it is essential
to establish a collective intelligence that enables autonomous
coordination and collaboration among the drones.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II describes the main concepts involved in swarm reconfigura-
bility, interfacing and control. In Section III, we introduce a
three-layered end-to-end design architecture for reconfigurable
robotic swarms. Section IV then delves into enabled technolo-
gies, focusing on our initial work towards a reconfigurable
drone swarm. In Section V, we discuss potential application
scenarios. Section VI concludes the work.
II. MO DE LS
We address the aforementioned challenges through an end-
to-end design: from the robot hardware and local decision
making on the computational and sensing resources to provid-
ing the swarm and its capabilities as a service for end-users.
Two key aspects in our work are:
•Reconfigurable hardware resources for flexible and
resource-rich computation platform at the swarm level
•Distributed data processing at the edge for collective
swarm intelligence.
Reconfigurability and distributed intelligence provides more
computational resources for multi-modal sensor fusion and
distributed computation. Our model leverages methodologies
and engineering techniques for distributed and dynamic man-
agement of elastic resources for swarms improving quality of
results. The models are:
1) Swarm-as-a-Service Model: A swarm provides services
to end-users with a control interface or API through what we
call a Swarm as a Service (SwaaS). SwaaS offers an edge
service model for swarm applications. In this view, each robot
with its specialization is an edge services provider (or just
an edge provider). Edge provider’s sensing, computational
and external communication resources are considered edge
resources. Edge resources (hardware and software) are co-
designed to make robots richer in terms of the resources
that they can provide. With this approach, we bring various

` `
Load
Distribution
Computational
Offloading
Computational
Offloading
(a) A cloud robotics system.
`
`
`
`
` `
(b) A swarm robotics system.
`
(c) A reconfigurable robotic swarm.
Cloud computing server
Human command inputs
`
Mesh network
Sensing node
Computational node
Fig. 2: Illustration of different connectivity modalities for a
swarm of drones, illustrating sensing and computing
roles together with interaction modalities.
concepts of edge computing and services models to the field
of multi-robot systems.
2) Application-Specific Resource Ensembles Model: Ap-
plication Specific Resource Ensembles (ASREs) [18] define
a specific organized set of edge resources (ASRE template
or pattern) in swarms forming the edge infrastructure. An
essential part of ASREs is the coordination and monitoring
of resources together with swarm control and coordination.
Resource management techniques enable service discovery,
service end-to-end communication segmentation, and dis-
tributed task computation under unreliable and uncertain envi-
ronments by incorporating uncertainty and elasticity [23]. For
our knowledge, these have not been applied before to drone
swarms. For example, [24], [25] are dedicated for containers
and virtual machines.
In our end-to-end vision, the central point is to provide dy-
namic and flexible swarms as an elastic heterogeneous multi-
robot system. In the system individual robots have different
sensing and computational capabilities, a mesh network takes
care of intra-swarm communication, and distributed algorithms
enable the swarm to perform collective decision making as if
it were a single unit. By elastic, we mean that the different
resources of robots are abstracted and can be reconfigured
depending on the application needs [26]. An illustration of
this concept, compared to current cloud robotic and swarm
robotic systems, appears in Fig. 2. In Fig. 2a, each drone is
independently connected to a cloud server, where it offloads
part of its data processing. Any external control in this case
goes through the cloud application, but direct control of drones
could be enabled as well (for example, if the movement
of the drone is controlled via a radio controller, and then
mapping or other algorithms are run in the cloud). In Fig. 2b,
the drones form together a swarm. Each individual drone in
the swarm has the same role initially, and both sensing and
data processing occur individually at each drone. Algorithms
describing the collaboration between drones could then run
at the swarm level, but each drone would be still a separate
entity. Finally, our approach is illustrated in Fig. 2c, where
all drones form a swarm as well. The key difference is that
the swarm and its applications and resources are abstracted
from individual drones and defined in a distributed manner
at the swarm level. The communication with a controller or
cloud services occurs from the swarm as a whole, and not
from individual drones as separate entities. Moreover, sensing
and computational resources, and the corresponding roles,
are assigned dynamically among the swarm members. In the
example illustrated in Fig. 2, half of the drones take a sensing
role as their main role while data processing is offloaded to
other drones assigned as computing nodes.
III. ARCHITECTURE LAYER S
We design an architecture with three layers and building
blocks as illustrated in Fig. 3. The layers are:
Physical Swarm Layer. The actual control of robots is
carried out at the physical layer, where the different hardware
and mesh communication solutions are defined. The definition

Sensing Resources
Hardware Resources
Intra-Swarm Communication
Robot control and dynamics
Local collision avoidance and
local path planning
Swarm Controller
SwaaS API
Collaborative
decision making
Collaborative sensing
and sensor fusion
Spatial coordination
Multi-agent control
Operational
constraints
Objective
Formation
Requested
Application
Regions of
interest
Environment
constratints
Control
Feedback
Instructions
Sensor
Data
Distributed Edge Services Layer
Sensing
constraints
Instructions
Application Layer
DATA
ASREs Templates
and Patterns Pool
Physical Swarm Layer
COMMANDS
Resource Manager
Dynamic and Elastic
Resource Provisioning
ASREManagement Services
Fig. 3: Proposed Architecture and Building Blocks for SwaaS and ASREs
of a set of computing resources, sensors and actuators needs
to be carried out as part of the swarm design in order to
enable higher degrees of optimization when the sensing and
computational resources are shared at the swarm level and
applications run in a distributed manner.
Edge Services Layer. This is the main focus of the swarm
design in terms of self-reconfigurability. This layer includes
a Resource Manager (RM) for configuring and managing
resources provided by the Physical Swarm Layer. Based on
application requirements, the RM will assemble resources
from edge providers into ASREs for SwaaS. The RM supports
the automatic creation of ASREs by requesting, provisioning
and orchestrating suitable resources.
This layer represents all the distributed services and pro-
cesses running within the swarm and executed at each in-
dividual robot. These processes are classified in three main
types: (1) spatial coordination (e.g., distributed formation
control [27], [28]), (2) collaborative sensing (e.g. cooperative
mapping [29]), and (3) collaborative decision making (e.g.
). These three apparently different parts of swarm control
and decision making have a high synergy and their optimal
operation depends on feedback from each other. These three
topics have mostly been studied separately in the previous
works [30], [31], [32]. Therefore, we have focused on the
design and development of techniques for efficient communi-
cation between these processes. In summary, the key novelty
is that ASREs and the RM implicitly manage collaboration
within the swarm.
At runtime, ASREs will form an elastic and resilient edge
mesh of services across robots in a swarm. The RM will
dynamically provision new resources from different providers
elastically. This kind of elasticity is carried out in an end-to-
end and bi-directional manner: the resources are provisioned
dynamically when new services are required or when the
available resources change. The RM learns and optimizes the
provisioning based on the reliability of resources, performance
variations, bottlenecks, and failures. The RM provisioning is
hidden from the application.
Application Layer. The application layer provides an in-
terface for controlling and interacting with the swarm. We
refer to this interface as the Swaas API. An external party or
swarm controller can select from a pool of ASRE templates,
which define the different patterns in which the swarm can be
configured for different applications. By choosing an ASRE
template through the SwaaS API, the swarm controller is
implicitly selecting a set of resources and services. These
resources are then provisioned and managed within the swarm
itself through the RM. The services are provided based on the
available distributed algorithms for sensing and coordination.
IV. RECONFIGURATION PROCESSES IN A DRO NE SWAR M
In this section, we discuss the specific technologies that
enable the realization of the self-reconfigurable robotic swarm
architecture defined in the previous section. We are in the
process of applying these technologies to a swarm of drones.
A. Reconfigurability-enabling Technologies
Currently, most small mobile robots and aerial drones rely
mainly on CPUs in order to perform all the navigation and
mission related computation, and microcontrollers for low-
level control such as flight controllers [33]. We are leveraging
existing technologies from other domains to enable reconfig-
uration within a drone swarm.
As a computing platform, we utilize FPGAs with embedded
processors to extend the existing algorithms with custom
hardware accelerators. FPGAs are reconfigurable hardware
accelerators that can be exploited in computationally intensive
and highly parallelizable tasks for autonomous robots, with
higher performance/size and performance/power ratio as we

have shown in previous works [34], [35]. Both the size
and power consumption of hardware are essential aspects to
take into account in drones. The use of FPGAs enables the
RM to not only provision the existing resources but also
dynamically provision new hardware accelerators on-demand.
Some drones are equipped with FPGAs while others have
embedded processors with GPU such as the NVIDIA Jetson
TX2.
At the software level, we utilize containers to enable dy-
namic resource management and task execution. Container
technologies are known but they have not been exploited for
drones. Our goal is to use containers to enable dynamic re-
sources management and task execution. All algorithms, from
spatial coordination to collaborative sensing, are containerized
and run in a distributed way. With efficient container orches-
tration, we are able to add flexibility and reconfigurability to
the swarm. We bring specific techniques for computational
load distribution, elasticity and resource management from the
edge-cloud domain to the robotics domain.
In order to interface sensors, actuators, communication
and the containerized algorithms, we utilize Robot Operating
System (ROS2) which runs as a container application as well.
ROS is the de-facto standard for robotic development in both
academia and industry. ROS2 focuses on distributed multi-
robot systems and real-time computing, and will allow us to
exploit container technologies for drones.
For network interfacing, there are no solutions that integrate
ROS2 and mesh networking so far. Our experiments will
utilize more traditional solutions at first, with all drones
connected to a single Wi-Fi access point. Nonetheless, we
will work towards the integration of ROS2 and a Bluetooth
5 mesh network. Another recent technology that can provide
significant advantages is ultra-wideband (UWB) [36]. UWB
enables accurate localization in multi-robot systems and, in
particular, in drones [37], and has the potential for simulta-
neous communication and localization. We will work on ex-
tending our current works on UWB-based mobile localization
systems [38], studying the integration of UWB as a network
interface between ROS2 nodes.
Finally, we leverage blockchain-powered consensus algo-
rithms suitable for multi-robot systems. Recent works [39],
[12], [40] have proposed design concepts for integrating next-
generation low-latency and scalable blockchains within het-
erogeneous multi-robot systems. Blockchains can be utilized
as a distributed framework to achieve consensus in a multi-
robot system, and also validate identities. This can be then
utilized by ASRE management services, which could, in turn,
be implemented as distributed Smart Contracts for resource
coordination. The idea of utilizing a blockchain-based frame-
work for managing edge resources has already been explored
in our previous works [41].
B. Edge computing algorithms for sensing
We classify the algorithms in the edge layer in three main
types: spatial coordination, collaborative sensing, and decision
making. In previous works, these are typically defined with
strong dependencies. For instance, depending on the sensing
variable robots might be required to be in a specific spatial
formation [42]. However, in our architecture these algorithms
are designed independently and abstracted as edge services.
This modular architecture brings multiple advantages. For
instance, spatial coordination algorithms take feedback from
the sensing algorithms regarding the location of regions of
interest that should be analyzed more closely. This feedback is
used to rearrange the drones in the proper shape and location.
At the same time, the role of each drone within the spatial
pattern is given by the collaborative decision making process.
Analogously, the spatial coordination algorithms give feedback
to other processes about the movement constrains of the swarm
surroundings.
C. Resource Management
The RM provisions and manages all resources, from
hardware to edge services. Sensing resources are abstracted
through ROS nodes (drivers) that produce data in standard
formats. Each edge service is broken down into sub-services
(for example, independent parts of an algorithm) and each
of these is abstracted as a ROS node that consumes and
produces different types of data (always in standard formats).
All these ROS nodes are containerized and provisioned by
the RM across the available the computing resources. The
computing resources are modeled based on the amount and
type of containers that they can run, and the performance for
each containers. The provisioning is an optimization process
that takes into account communication latency between data
producers and consumers, and execution latency. The RM
itself runs as a distributed and containerized application across
the swarm, and manages the resources with elastic techniques.
Each application that utilizes the SwaaS API must define a
Quality of Results (QoRs) requirement. We bring this concept
from elastic computing models in which a QoR is defined
in terms of performance, quality of data, type of output, and
other measurable information [43], which the swarm provides
to the controller through the SwaaS API. The QoR is essential
for elastic resource management to dynamically provision
the different resources taking the QoR requirement as an
optimization constraint. We will extend the work by Mariani et
al. on coordination-aware elasticity for developing primitives
and algorithms to control the elasticity of swarms [44].
V. AP PL IC ATIO N SCE NARIOS
Drones are already being utilized by fire departments [45],
police forces [46], and for creating ad-hoc networks in post-
disaster scenarios [47]. Fire and police departments are using
drones for monitoring and surveying emergency scenes and
disaster sites as well as finding missing people. Going beyond
perception-centric usage would be beneficial in all of these
use cases. This would require embedding intelligence and
information processing in the drones themselves, especially
when authorities are starting to deploy multiple drones in
parallel for the same applications. Deploying multiple drones
requires coordination and collaboration among their operators

binding valuable resources from the actual mission. Therefore,
it is essential to establish a collective intelligence that enables
autonomous coordination and collaboration among the drones
instead of passively receiving the tasks individually from a
centralized control system.
Another key application area for UAVs is real-time sur-
veying and monitoring. The same methods and technologies
presented in this paper can be applied in different tasks such as
environmental monitoring, land surveying or scientific study of
different parameters in remote locations. The main benefit of
utilizing reconfigurable drone swarms is the ability to perform
complex data analysis at the Swarm level through distributed
Edge computing. This allows for long-term autonomous oper-
ation when energy constraints allow, as well as reconnaissance
in remote areas with poor network connectivity.
VI. CONCLUSION
We have proposed an architectural definition for reconfig-
urability in heterogeneous robotic swarms. This architecture is
based on a combination of concepts and techniques from the
robotics domain, multi-agent systems domain and edge-cloud
computing domain. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the
first work that proposes the abstraction and management of
both hardware (sensors, actuators, computation and commu-
nication) and software (distributed sensing, coordination and
decision making) as edge resources with elastic techniques. In
particular, we explain how we are designing a reconfigurable
drone swarm and what are the different hardware and software
that make reconfigurability and elasticity possible.
ACK NOW LE DG EM EN TS
This work was partially supported by the Academy of
Finland’s AutoSOS project with grant number 328755.
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