A Survey of High-Level Programming Languages for Operating Swarm Robots

Woosuk Kang, EunJin Jeong, Taejoon Yoon, Seokhaeng Heo, Soonhoi Ha

http://doi.org/10.5626/JOK.2022.49.11.936

Robots used for unmanned tasks in various fields have been developing in the direction of operating multiple robots rather than using only a single robot. Since swarm robotics aims to outperform a single robot through cooperative control of multiple robots, it can efficiently perform tasks such as building local maps and searching for survivors. Although developing and operating such swarm robot systems requires a skilled developer, high-level programming languages and frameworks that can support non-experts to easily specify and operate swarm robots are being developed. In this paper, we selected and introduced 11 swarm robot specification languages tested by simulations or using real robots. We compared the difference between selected languages from the viewpoint of software and swarm robot operation. Finally, limitations of swarm robotics languages developed so far and future tasks are discussed.