An artificial lymph node architecture for homeostasis in collective robotic systems

The SYMBRION project is concerned with the development of super-large swarms of robots that dock with each other and symbiotically share energy and computational resources to form a single artificial organism. This position paper proposes a software architecture, inspired by the lymph node architecture of the biological immune system, that affords homeostasis of individual and collective robotic systems. When robotic units join together into an artificial organism, they form an 'artificial lymphatic system', allowing the robotic units to exchange immunological information. This results in the implementation of the organism homeostasis.