Buzz: An Extensible Programming Language for Self-Organizing Heterogeneous Robot Swarms

TL;DR

Buzz is an extensible programming language designed for heterogeneous robot swarms, enabling decentralized self-organization and flexible behavior definition at both individual and swarm levels.

Contribution

Introduces Buzz, a novel language supporting heterogeneous swarms with extensible primitives and a decentralized run-time platform compatible with existing frameworks.

Findings

Demonstrates scalability through simulated experiments

Shows robustness of the run-time platform

Provides practical code examples for swarm behaviors

Abstract

We present Buzz, a novel programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms. Buzz advocates a compositional approach, offering primitives to define swarm behaviors both from the perspective of the single robot and of the overall swarm. Single-robot primitives include robot-specific instructions and manipulation of neighborhood data. Swarm-based primitives allow for the dynamic management of robot teams, and for sharing information globally across the swarm. Self-organization stems from the completely decentralized mechanisms upon which the Buzz run-time platform is based. The language can be extended to add new primitives (thus supporting heterogeneous robot swarms), and its run-time platform is designed to be laid on top of other frameworks, such as Robot Operating System. We showcase the capabilities of Buzz by providing code examples, and analyze scalability and robustness of the run-time platform through realistic simulated experiments with representative swarm algorithms.