How can we make use of one or more computationally powerful virtual robots, to create a hive mind network to better coordinate multi-robot teams?

Project description:
1. Research Aim and Overview
This research aims to take inspiration from bee colonies to develop a hive mind [1] network. The
proposed network architecture makes use of a queen node, a virtual entity with a large computational
resource (e.g. a cloud server) that all robots on the network can connect to. In a similar vein to the queen
bee, the queen node can process data for the entire hive mind whilst the individual robots are only able
to process data at a local level. The queen node may also be used for communicating information to the
network, sharing data between robots, monitoring the status of robots, and controlling the behaviour of
the network as a whole. The queen bee model will be combined with swarm robotics concepts whereby
teams of robots operate in a distributed manner.
This project aims to answer 3 key research questions, these have been written with the intention of
addressing approximately one per year of the PhD:
1. How can we build a multi-robot team with an integrated queen node and what useful functions
should the queen node complete?
2. Can this model be used to facilitate the communication between two or more multi-robot teams,
each with their own queen node, to complete a shared task?
3. How can we demonstrate the queen node model's effectiveness on real world applications to
improve swarm performance outside of the laboratory?