SynthesisSensors (Basel, Switzerland)2026
Stigmergy and Self-Organizing Systems in Swarm Robotics: A Systematic Review.
Synthesis in Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
This systematic review follows the PRISMA 2020 guidelines to provide an analysis of the mechanisms of stigmergy and self-organization in swarm robotics. The purpose of this review is to conduct a bibliometric, thematic, and epistemological analysis. Journal articles addressing stigmergy, self-organization, and swarm robotics were included, whereas duplicate, irrelevant, and methodologically insufficient studies were excluded. The scientific databases searched were IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, ScienceDirect, Springer Nature, MDPI, and Wiley Online Library from June 2025 to April 2026. Three reviewers independently screened studies using predefined criteria; no formal risk-of-bias assessment or meta-analysis was performed. In total, 338 scientific works were analyzed, representing a wide range of different approaches and applications in stigmergy and self-organization in swarm robotics. The results were synthesized through four complementary analytical axes. The review highlights the significance of stigmergy and self-organization principles in providing robustness, scalability, and adaptability in swarm robots, and shows the increasing popularity of hybrid solutions based on swarm optimization, distributed learning, and adaptive control. Key limitations include the fragmentation of methodologies, the lack of benchmarking, the underrepresentation of computational and physical perspectives, and challenges in multi-scale modeling. The review provides an integrated conceptual framework and identifies future research directions. This work was supported by FAPERJ (grants 201.013/2022 and 200.434/2026) and registered with the Open Science Framework.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.