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Robot Swarm Collaboration in the Unstructured Environment

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensors and Robotics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 August 2025 | Viewed by 108

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Interests: swarm intelligence; metaheuristics; deep learning; UAV

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Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Ministry of Education, Guizhou University, Guiyang 550025, China
Interests: intelligent manufacturing; manufacturing big data and manufacturing information systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Hong Kong
Interests: decision making; blockchain; Internet of Things; Industry 4.0 technologies; logistics management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Multi-robot systems play a crucial role in human life due to their diverse functionalities, high flexibility, and strong scalability. Nevertheless, as intelligent transformation advances, robots operating in typical, structured environments are no longer adequate to meet the complex, dynamic, and ever-changing application demands. In unstructured environments, robots must utilize multiple sensors to enable them to collaborate and communicate with each other in groups. Therefore, how to enhance the swarm collaboration capabilities of robots is an urgent and important issue that needs to be discussed.

The objective of this Special Issue is to compile the latest studies on the autonomous operation of robots in unstructured environments. This compilation aims to enhance the application and deployment of autonomous robots in future fields such as industrial, medical, agricultural, etc. On the one hand, the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies (e.g., reinforcement learning and transfer learning) has significantly advanced the autonomous perception and learning capabilities of robots. On the other hand, the further evolution of learning and swarm intelligence models has successfully enabled the application of interaction between groups of robots in various fields. These technologies promote the development of individual robots and help to expand the potential applications of intelligent swarm robots.

This Special Issue aims to demonstrate the latest technical developments in individual behavior and swarm intelligence from the perspective of intelligent robots based on multiple sensors. We welcome innovative contributions in the form of original research articles, reviews, opinion papers, perspectives, and papers on novel methods for evolving robot behavior.

Contributions include, but are not limited to, the following:

  1. Robot environment perception based on multiple sensors;
  2. Robot target detection based on multiple sensors;
  3. Robot autonomous planning based on multiple sensors;
  4. Robot skill learning based on multiple sensors;
  5. Multi-sensor-based swarm robot collaboration;
  6. Self-decision-making of swarm robots based on multiple sensors;
  7. Intelligent cooperative behavior of human–robot;
  8. Blockchain-based wireless communication within robotic swarms;
  9. Cybersecurity of the robot swarm collaboration.

Dr. Qingsong Fan
Prof. Dr. Haisong Huang
Dr. Yung Po Tsang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • robotics
  • unstructured environments
  • intelligent workshop
  • task scheduling
  • environmental perception
  • autonomous learning
  • individual skills of robots
  • swarm intelligence
  • swarm evolution
  • self-organization
  • self-decision
  • human–robot collaboration
  • blockchain
  • wireless communications
  • cybersecurity

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Published Papers

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