{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,25]],"date-time":"2026-04-25T07:41:57Z","timestamp":1777102917309,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":63,"publisher":"American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)","issue":"96","content-domain":{"domain":["www.science.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Sci. Robot."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2024,11,13]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>\n            We present the self-organizing nervous system (SoNS), a robot swarm architecture based on self-organized hierarchy. The SoNS approach enables robots to autonomously establish, maintain, and reconfigure dynamic multilevel system architectures. For example, a robot swarm consisting of\n            <jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\n            independent robots could transform into a single\n            <jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\n            \u2013robot SoNS and then into several independent smaller SoNSs, where each SoNS uses a temporary and dynamic hierarchy. Leveraging the SoNS approach, we showed that sensing, actuation, and decision-making can be coordinated in a locally centralized way without sacrificing the benefits of scalability, flexibility, and fault tolerance, for which swarm robotics is usually studied. In several proof-of-concept robot missions\u2014including binary decision-making and search and rescue\u2014we demonstrated that the capabilities of the SoNS approach greatly advance the state of the art in swarm robotics. The missions were conducted with a real heterogeneous aerial-ground robot swarm, using a custom-developed quadrotor platform. We also demonstrated the scalability of the SoNS approach in swarms of up to 250 robots in a physics-based simulator and demonstrated several types of system fault tolerance in simulation and reality.\n          <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1126\/scirobotics.adl5161","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,11,13]],"date-time":"2024-11-13T18:58:31Z","timestamp":1731524311000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.34133\/aaas_crossmark","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["Self-organizing nervous systems for robot swarms"],"prefix":"10.1126","volume":"9","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0329-9592","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Weixu","family":"Zhu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"IRIDIA, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2832-1239","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Sinan","family":"O\u011fuz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IRIDIA, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."},{"name":"SAAS, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1595-8487","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Mary Katherine","family":"Heinrich","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IRIDIA, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0932-3215","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Michael","family":"Allwright","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IRIDIA, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."}]},{"given":"Mostafa","family":"Wahby","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IRIDIA, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9994-2908","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Anders Lyhne","family":"Christensen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"SDU UAS Center, MMMI, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark."}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0419-8483","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Emanuele","family":"Garone","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"SAAS, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3971-0507","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Marco","family":"Dorigo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IRIDIA, Universit\u00e9 Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium."}]}],"member":"221","reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_2_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/scirobotics.abf1416"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/MRA.2013.2252996"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1254295"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1245842"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_6_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/scirobotics.aau8479"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_7_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1098\/rsos.180296"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_8_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1144259"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_9_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/scirobotics.abe4385"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_10_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s11721-008-0015-3"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_11_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"H. 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