Multi-Robot Systems

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Overview

The field studies how robot teams can divide work, coordinate motion, and combine information to accomplish tasks that are difficult for one robot alone. Common approaches include multi-agent path finding and task allocation for warehouses and exploration, distributed control and reinforcement learning for swarms, and cooperative localization and SLAM that fuse cameras, ranging, and inertial sensors. Researchers also design communication protocols, simulators, and operator interfaces to support heterogeneous robots while managing limited bandwidth, computation, and human attention. A central challenge is making coordination safe and reliable as teams grow, robots fail, environments change, and methods move from simulation to real hardware.

Latest papers

CardsList

205 papers30 papers in the last four weeks, up 76% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Quotient Geometry and Persistence-Stable Metrics for Swarm Configurations

    Mar 14, 2026Mark M. BaileyMulti-Robot SystemsSwarm Robotics

    AI, Cyber, Influence and Data Science Department Director, Biological and Computational Intelligence Center National Intelligence University Bethesda, MD, USA

  2. Data-Driven Autoregressive Power Prediction for GTernal Robots in the Robotarium

    Mar 14, 2026Yassin Abdelmeguid, Ammar HasanAutoregressive ModelingMobile Robotics

    American University of Sharjah

  3. Hybrid topology control: a dynamic leader-based distributed edge-addition and deletion mechanism

    Mar 13, 2026Kunal Garg, Xi YuMulti-Robot SystemsMulti-Robot Coordination

    School of Engineering for Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University · School of Manufacturing Systems and Networks, Arizona State University

  4. Conflict Mitigation in Shared Environments using Flow-Aware Multi-Agent Path Finding

    Mar 13, 2026Lukas Heuer, Yufei Zhu, Luigi Palmieri +4Multi-Robot Motion PlanningMulti-Agent Path Finding

    L. Heuer, Y. Zhu and M. Magnusson - Örebro University · L. Palmieri, A. Rudenko and A. Mannucci - Bosch Research · A. Rudenko - Technical University of Munich +1

  5. Bridging the Awareness Gap: Socially Mediated State Externalization for Transparent Distributed Home Robots

    Mar 12, 2026Wenzheng Zhao, Manideep Duggi, Fengpei YuanHuman-Robot InteractionMulti-Robot Systems

    Faculty of Robotics Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Rd, Worcester, MA, USA

  6. Learning Visuomotor Policy for Multi-Robot Laser Tag Game

    Mar 12, 2026Kai Li, Shiyu ZhaoVisuomotor Policy LearningMulti-Robot Systems

    College of Computer Science and Technology at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. · School of Engineering at Westlake University, Hangzhou, China.

  7. Distributed Kalman--Consensus Filtering with Adaptive Uncertainty Weighting for Multi-Object Tracking in Mobile Robot Networks

    Mar 11, 2026Niusha Khosravi, Rodrigo Ventura, Meysam BasiriMulti-Object TrackingMulti-Robot Systems

    Instituto Superior Técnico University of Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal

  8. On the Cost of Evolving Task Specialization in Multi-Robot Systems

    Mar 10, 2026Paolo Leopardi, Heiko Hamann, Jonas Kuckling +1Multi-Robot SystemsSwarm Robotics

    Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany · Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany · Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Technology Nuremberg, Germany

  9. Fly, Track, Land: Infrastructure-less Magnetic Localization for Heterogeneous UAV-UGV Teaming

    Mar 9, 2026Valerio Brunacci, Davide Plozza, Alessio De Angelis +2RoboticsWireless Localization

    Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, 06125, Italy · Multi-Robot Systems Group, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, 16627, Czech Republic · Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (D-ITET), ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8092, Switzerland

  10. A Distributed Gaussian Process Model for Multi-Robot Mapping

    Mar 7, 2026Seth Nabarro, Mark van der Wilk, Andrew J. DavisonSparse Gaussian ProcessesGaussian Belief Propagation

    Dyson Robotics Lab, Imperial College London · Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford

  11. The Talking Robot: Distortion-Robust Acoustic Models for Robot-Robot Communication

    Mar 7, 2026Hanlong Li, Karishma Kamalahasan, Jiahui Li +2Robust ASRAutomatic Speech Recognition

    Institute of Science Tokyo · Georgia Institute of Technology

  12. LLM-Guided Decentralized Exploration with Self-Organizing Robot Teams

    Mar 5, 2026Hiroaki Kawashima, Shun Ikejima, Takeshi Takai +2Multi-Robot ExplorationAutonomous Robot Exploration

    Graduate School of Information Science, University of Hyogo, Hyogo, Japan · School of Social Information Science, University of Hyogo, Hyogo, Japan · Takenaka Research & Development Institute, Takenaka Corporation, Chiba, Japan +1

  13. IMR-LLM: Industrial Multi-Robot Task Planning and Program Generation using Large Language Models

    Mar 3, 2026Xiangyu Su, Juzhan Xu, Oliver van Kaick +2Robot Task PlanningLarge Language Model-Based Robot Planning

    Shenzhen University. · SpeedBot Robotics Co., Ltd. · Carleton University. +1

  14. Parallel Reference-Centric Continuous-Time Relative Localization with Augmented Clamped Non-Uniform B-Splines

    Feb 25, 2026Jiadong Lu, Zhehan Li, Tao Han +4Relative Pose EstimationMulti-Robot Systems

    State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China. · Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University, Huzhou, 313000, China. · The School of Automation and Intellegent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China. +1

  15. Hilbert-Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Scalable Multi-Robot Coverage and Exploration

    Feb 23, 2026Tamil Selvan Gurunathan, Aryya GangopadhyayMulti-Robot ExplorationMulti-Robot Systems

  16. Distributed and Consistent Multi-Robot Visual-Inertial-Ranging Odometry on Lie Groups

    Feb 22, 2026Ziwei Kang, Yizhi ZhouRobot State EstimationRobot Localization

    School of Control and Computer Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, VA 102206, China · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA

  17. Dual-Quadruped Collaborative Transportation in Narrow Environments via Safe Reinforcement Learning

    Feb 18, 2026Zhezhi Lei, Zhihai Bi, Wenxin Wang +1Multi-Robot Cargo TransportationMulti-Robot Systems

    Robotics and Autonomous Systems Thrust, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou 511453, China · Advanced Remanufacturing & Technology Centre (ARTC), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore 637143 · Cheng Kar-Shun Robotics Institute, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China

  18. Lifelong Scalable Multi-Agent Realistic Testbed and A Comprehensive Study on Design Choices in Lifelong AGV Fleet Management Systems

    Feb 17, 2026Jingtian Yan, Yulun Zhang, Zhenting Liu +5Multi-Robot SystemsMulti-Agent Path Finding

    Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University · Symbotic

  19. A Comparison of Bayesian Prediction Techniques for Mobile Robot Trajectory Tracking

    Feb 17, 2026Jose Luis Peralta-Cabezas, Miguel Torres-Torriti, Marcelo Guarini-HermannRobot Trajectory TrackingRobot State Estimation

    Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Casilla 306-22, Santiago, Chile

  20. Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap with multipanda_ros2: A Real-Time ROS2 Framework for Multimanual Systems

    Feb 2, 2026Jon Škerlj, Seongjin Bien, Abdeldjallil Naceri +1Robotic ControlRobot Dynamics Identification

    Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany · Technische Universität Nürnberg (UTN), Germany · Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, UAE

  21. MOSAIC: Modular Scalable Autonomy for Intelligent Coordination of Heterogeneous Robotic Teams

    Jan 30, 2026David Oberacker, Julia Richter, Philip Arm +10Multi-Robot SystemsMulti-Robot Exploration

    FZI Forschungszentrum für Informatik, Karlsruhe, Germany · Machine Intelligence and Robotics Lab (MaiRo), Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany · Robotic Systems Lab (RSL), ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland +1

  22. CREPES-X: Hierarchical Bearing-Distance-Inertial Direct Cooperative Relative Pose Estimation System

    Dec 31, 2025Zhehan Li, Jiadong Lu, Zheng Wang +6Relative Pose EstimationMulti-Robot Systems

    State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. · Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University, Huzhou, China. · University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. +1

  23. Flocking phase transition and threat responses in bio-inspired autonomous drone swarms

    Dec 24, 2025Matthieu Verdoucq, Dari Trendafilov, Clément Sire +3Aerial RoboticsMulti-Robot Systems

    Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile, Université de Toulouse, France · Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative (CBI), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) & Université de Toulouse – Paul Sabatier, France · Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, CNRS & Université de Toulouse – Paul Sabatier, France

  24. Modelling and Model-Checking a ROS2 Multi-Robot System using Timed Rebeca

    Nov 19, 2025Hiep Hong Trinh, Marjan Sirjani, Federico Ciccozzi +2Multi-Robot SystemsRobotics

    Mälardalen University, Universitetsplan 1, 721 23 Västerås, Sweden · KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Brinellvägen 8, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden

  25. ARMADA: Autonomous Online Failure Detection and Human Shared Control Empower Scalable Real-world Deployment and Adaptation

    Oct 2, 2025Wenye Yu, Jun Lv, Zixi Ying +3Robot Policy AdaptationRobot Imitation Learning

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Shanghai Innovation Institute · Noematrix Ltd.