Autonomus Oil Skimmer

A particular oil spill has been detected and after a certain response time, the robotic swarm is transported and deployed by a dedicated ship (or other means) in close proximity to the spill The units have the ability (via appropriate sen-sors) to identify oil target areas and confront the spill. During their operation they need to return to the deployment ship many times for various functions, like unloading or refuelling (if the power autonomous capacity is reached). In order to make more effective use of the swarm system, in some cases the robots might exhibit special forms of co-operative behaviour. The robots may need at times to cluster tightly together, and at other times to scatter evenly in their working area so that the work can be partitioned evenly among them. Sometimes they need to spread out far away from their original position, for instance, to explore. For example, presents a special case where, apart from the use of a boom, the robots could cluster tightly below a threshold to protect a coastline by the approaching spill.