Deployment and Redeployment of Wireless Sensor Networks : a Swarm Robotics Perspective

Deployment of WSNs is an important issue that requires careful consideration, as it can make the difference between an efficient and an unproductive system. The introduction of node mobility provides a wealth of potential solutions to the deployment problem, which can lead to higher robustness, flexibility and adaptivity. When provided with mobility features, network nodes are analogous to autonomous robots with local sensing and communication abilities. Therefore, behavioral strategies developed for collections of autonomous robots may be exploited in the mobile WSN domain. This is particularly true for swarm robotics studies, which emphasize self-organizing behaviors that deal with limited individual abilities, local sensing and local communication. In this chapter, we discuss the challenges and opportunities offered by swarm robotics with respect to the deployment of mobile WSNs. We review the state of the art in swarm robotics for coverage, exploration and navigation tasks, which are directly linked to the deployment problem, and we identify relevant directions for an hybridization of WSN and swarm robotics research.