Exploring the Interplay of Swarm Robotics and Choreography

Large groups of beings acting coherently together have long been a subject of human fascination. When observing a flock of birds or a swarm of ants, we wonder what their motivation is or get lost in the contemplation of their complex organization and coordinated motion. Nowadays, a branch of robotic engineering is translating findings from decades of biological swarm observation into artificial robotic swarm algorithms. Despite the functional and social potential of technological work in robotic swarms, it remains opaque to non-experts, and to demystify and enrich this technological work, our team has leveraged interdisciplinary collaborative work to make groups of robots move in a decentralized, emergent way. We postulate that collaborations between engineering and dance can benefit from a shared ontology, and thus, we introduce one in this chapter that is based on swarm robotics and group choreography.