Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. ″In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between the robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act.″
This could perhaps be applied to an AWE farm where the units are structurally independent but are evolving according to the other units and the environment. The respective tethers can be a challenge.
Another configuration is a kite network (Daisy type, or The Pyramid with the connections by ropes between the three units) where units are structurally connected. Perhaps in the end the whole could be seen as a single unit, but a more or less complex one for robotics.
If you’re trying to control a kite, your actual flight path, and that of the tether, will deviate from your programmed flight path. I imagine it like a growing and shrinking band around the programmed flight path. I’m sure there has been work and modeling on this. That model would then be an input I think into your swarm robotics logic.
Maybe the band is wider in marginal wind speeds and at the edge of the wind window and in gustier wind and at lower tether tensions and so on, so you’d increase the distance between kites in those conditions for example. I’d be interested in this flight path modeling first I think. And then maybe if you had that, you could model a number of AWE systems in a simulation and see how close together you could put them and how you could change the behavior of the individual kites to be able to fly them closer together, at which point swarms robotics becomes relevant I think.
A first question I’d have is when it makes sense and when not to fly your kites as close together as possible, taking into consideration land use cost vs loss of efficiency from the kites flying too close to each other for example.