The main aim of every research endeavor is ultimately to develop and produce output
which will added benefit to human life. They can either by helping, simplifying, optimizing
or even replacing human tasks. Robotic is one of the examples which have been widely
used to assist human in solving different types of tasks. However, a traditional robotic
system either manually control or autonomously control has many technical limitations
such as high structural complexity, low level of fault tolerance and constrained by the
limited task performing capabilities. As a result, many complex tasks are out‐of‐reach and
in most cases failed to be executed especially in large and unstructured workspaces. To
overcome these limitations, a new approach in robotic research called swarm robotics has
been actively researched over the last few decades. A basic principle of the swarm robotics
tasks development is to mimic robustness, scalability, and flexibility of some types of
insects and animals. The research into swarm robotics has grown significantly since its
infancy. The multi‐agent robotics module try to mimic the capability and the intelligence
of biological insects and animals which possess interesting social behavior. Since the
beginning of this research area, many valuable contributions from different aspects and
scopes of the swarm robotics researches have been made. In swarm robotics, some tasks
can be considered as fundamental tasks while other tasks are the one that correlated to
the fundamental tasks. In this presentation, the tasks are categorized into two major types:
low‐level tasks and high‐level tasks. The low‐level tasks include aggregation, dispersion,
self‐assembly and self‐reconfigurable, pattern formation and flocking, robot‐environment
interaction, task allocation and learning. The discussion scopes of the low‐level tasks
include definition and purpose, classification and methods. The high‐level tasks include
collective source searching, collective mapping, collective foraging, collective transport,
collective manipulation and collective tracking. High‐level tasks are discussed in terms of
related skills and methods. A number of swarm robotics hardware and software platforms
will also be highlighted to give an overview of the platforms which can be useful for swarm
robotics behaviors and tasks researched. Some potential applications of swarm robotics
will also be shared. At the end of this presentation, a number of challenges and the ways
forward for swarm robotics research from the perspective of swarm robotics task are
briefly suggested. The swarm robotics system can be conclusively said to be a currently
developed technology for the future applications. One can imagine the wide range of
applications if swarm robotics has reach its maturity in which all limitations and
weaknesses are successfully eliminated in the future. Swarm robots can fulfill many
applications that required a self‐organization system.

Biography:

Mohd Rizal Arshad graduated from the University of Liverpool, in
1994 with a B Eng in the field of Medical Electronics and
Instrumentation He then pursued his MSc in Electronic Control
Engineering at the University of Salford, graduating in Dec 1995
Following from this, in early 1996 he continued his study with a PhD
degree in Electronic Engineering, with specialization in robotic vision
system After completing his PhD training, i e January 1999 he
started working at the Universiti Sains Malaysia ( Malaysia as
a full time academic He is a Full Professor and has supervised
many postgraduate students at the MSc and PhD levels He has
also published actively in local and international publications
Currently, he is the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and
International) at the Universiti Malaysia Perlis UniMAP He was
also an Adjunct Professor at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (
for a period of two years 2016 2018
He is currently the President of the Malaysian Society for Automatic
Control Engineers ( and Past Chair of the Oceanic
Engineering Society ( Malaysia Chapter In early 2017 he was
awarded with the Professional Engineer P Eng status by the Board
of Engineer, Malaysia ( Prof Rizal is well known as the
pioneer of underwater system technology research efforts in
Malaysia Prof Rizal is very interested in investigating the fusion of
the natural world with the modern engineering pool of knowledge