Sci. Robot.| Robots 'Hear' the Shape of the Field: No Localization, No Map, Just Neighbor-to-Neighbor Communication

Researchers have proposed a new framework called spectral swarm robotics (SSR), which enables a group of robots to determine the shape of their environment solely by exchanging information with neighboring robots. This method leverages invariants of the Laplacian spectrum to estimate the second smallest eigenvalue (λ2) through local interactions, thereby classifying the shape of the field. Experiments conducted on both simulation and real robot platforms demonstrate high recognition accuracy across different shapes, without the need for localization, maps, or global communication.