Standard approaches to understanding swarms rely on inspiration from biology and are generally covered by the term "biomimetics." This book focuses on a different, complementary inspiration, namely physics. The editors have introduced the term 'physicomimetics' to refer to physics-based swarm approaches, which offer two advantages. First, they capture the notion that "nature is lazy', meaning that physics-based systems always perform the minimal amount of work necessary, which is an especially important advantage in swarm robotics. Second, physics is the most predictive science, and can...
Standard approaches to understanding swarms rely on inspiration from biology and are generally covered by the term "biomimetics." This book focuses...