I am a robotics engineer at a small robotics company in the Silicon Valley. We have developed a robotic system that does something similar to what your thinking. They are autonomous mobile robots that work together path planning, task distribution,..blah blah. Each robot is in charge of its own sensory data, sonar and Laser Range Finder, and shares it with the other robots over Wifi. Its a ton of fun to develop and play with these robots, but it is really tough to find real life applications. I would love to get involved with developing this kind of system in 3D space. Basically the map scanning robots in Prometheus are my dream. Gotta start somewhere.