We envision that in the future lots of tasks that are handled nowadays by few but complex mobile robots will be performed by huge swarms of tiny robots. This way the system becomes more robust against single failures and cheaper, since the robots can be very simple. As a prerequisite, the robots have to be able to form given formations in order to organise their work. We review new strategies that perform the task of building a simple line with robots that are limited to see only their direct

more »

... rrounding. As energy is the main limiting factor, we analyse how the two main energy consumers (energy for sensing and energy for motion) are affected by our algorithms. 1877-0509 © Selection and peer review under responsibility of FET11 conference organizers and published by Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. © Selection and peer review under responsibility of FET11 conference organizers and published by Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.