Object: a book      
   
Location: high shelf, exact location unknown
   
Agent: Swarmanoid, robot swarm consisting out of three types of robot.
  
Mission: Impossible?
      
Mission Tactics: flying eye-bots explore environment, attaching themselves to the ceiling, forming a string of communicating robots. Proceed until object is found. After visually locating target, signal is sent through the communication string of flying robots. Signal reaches rolling foot-bots, which will form a communication chain, similar to their flying colleagues. After reaching target, two foot-bots will grab hold of hand-bot and lead it to target. Hand-bot arrives and launches magnet-tipped string to ceiling. Then, hand-bot will climb up shelf hand-over-hand, until target is reached. Target acquisition. Hand-bot lowers itself gently to ground, stabilised by aforementioned string. Back-up foot-bot hand-bot team will be standing by.
For visual, see video:
   

    
Mission background: Marco Dorigo, at Free University of Brussels, Belgium and colleagues created swarm of rolling robots six years ago. By now, flying and climbing robots have been added, resulting in Swarmanoid. Current capacity: 30 foot-bots, 10 eye-bots and 8 hand-bots. Experiment footage won video competition at Conference of Artificial Intelligence in San Francisco. 
   
Communication: During mission, all communication will be handled through LED colour-coded signals. Additional infrared signal to locate fellow robots. 
   
Outlook: Succesfull mission will result in further development of heterogenous robot swarm, possibly leading to implementation in rescue missions. 
   
Further information, such as specifics about the robot types, as well as additional photographical and video footage, can be found at Swarmanoid website.
   
Good luck, Swarmanoid.

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