Swarm behaviour emerges from rules which govern the interaction between different agents and between each agent and their surrounding environment. Birds flocking, fish schooling, and bee foraging are examples of swarm behaviours found in natural systems. Two decades ago, roboticists found these systems to be an interesting source of inspiration due to their scalability, robustness, adaptability, and emergent features.
Taking inspiration from nature to engineer robot systems involves drawing a set of assumptions and experiment scenarios. These assumptions, in many cases, evolved to become constraints surrounding the research culture around swarm robotics. As the field has grown to enter the scene of real-world applications, the initial assumptions have also grown to become stereotypes that hold back some of the research practices in swarm robotics.
The aim of the ’Breaking Swarm Stereotypes’ workshop is to challenge conventional perceptions and explore new dimensions in the field of swarm robotics, as well as foster interdisciplinary discussions. By bringing together roboticists from different sectors, we aim to synergise the efforts of navigating the research landscape of swarm robotics by exploring conventionally overlooked areas.
Stereotypes to Break
- Swarms have to be made up of a very large number of ”simple” individuals.
- Swarms will only result in ”toy scenarios”.
- Swarms have to be fully decentralised.
- Swarms are not safe.
- Swarms have to be dense.
- Swarms are homogeneous.
Schedule
| Time | Section | Speaker | Tentative Talk Title |
| Morning Session | |||
| 08:45-09:00 | Welcome | Organisers | |
| 09:00-09:45 | Panel 1 | Chair – Roderich Gross 1. Alyssa Pierson 2. Amanda Porok 3. Tin Lun Lam 4. Michael Otte | What stereotypes need to be debunked? |
| 09:45-10:00 | Interactive game | Louisa Di Felice | The Human Swarm Game |
| 10:00-10:30 | Break | ||
| 10:30-11:00 | Talk: Stereotype 1 | Heiko Hamann | Challenging Scalability in Robot Swarms: Robustness under Dynamic Swarm Size |
| 11:00-11:30 | Talk: Stereotype 2 | Takeshi Ikegami | Emergence of Individuality from Collective Autonomous Robots |
| 11:30-12:00 | Talk: Stereotype 3 | Eduardo Castello | Blockchain-based swarms: past, present, and especially future |
| 12:00-12:30 | Poster Session | Participants | 1-minute flash talk to provide an introduction to posters |
| 12:30-13:30 | Lunch | ||
| Afternoon Session | |||
| 13:30-13:40 | Industry Talk | Aron Kisdi | Forest Ranger, how robot swarms can protect our forests |
| 13:40-14:10 | Talk: Stereotype 4 | Ani Hsieh | Robot Collectives for Environmental Stewardship |
| 14:10-14:40 | Talk: Stereotype 5 | Elena Vella | Sacrifice: Standing Stone and Swarm Robotics |
| 14:40-15:10 | Talk: Stereotype 6 | Marco Dorigo, Mary Katherine Heinrich | Switching between decentralised and centralised control in swarm robotics |
| 15:10-15:45 | Break | ||
| 15:45-16:15 | Talk: Stereotype 7 | TBA | TBA |
| 16:15-17:00 | Panel 2 | Chair – Sabine Hauert 1. Gennaro Notomista 2. Andreas Kolling 3. Mohammad Soorati | Swarms for People |
| 17:00-17:15 | Closing and Awards | Organisers |
Speakers
Call for contributions
We welcome submissions of poster abstracts, videos, and demonstrations.
Selected authors of poster abstracts will be invited to present their work in the form of a 1-slide 1-minute pitch talk and poster at the workshop itself. The abstract should be a maximum of 2 pages, excluding references.
Selected demonstrations and videos will be shown during the workshop.
Topics of interest:
- Semi-centralised robot swarms.
- Sparse robot swarms.
- Robot swarms are composed of sophisticated robots.
- Security of swarm robotics.
- Swarm system integration into larger systems.
- Multi-robot systems.
- Heterogeneous swarms.
- Swarms across scales.
- Swarms in art.
The abstract should be submitted via the form below in IEEE PDF format.
The abstract will have no DOI attached.
https://forms.gle/Qkj3N46NPRJAe7mYA
Guidelines and templates can be found below:
ICRA Guidelines / LaTex Template / Word Template
Demonstration descriptions should be submitted via https://forms.gle/Me19DcNAC6uNDXkC9
Videos should be submitted via https://forms.gle/AvehY5D2h3zgbVRx6
We will accept submissions on a rolling basis, with three deadlines:
Early deadline, 1st MarchSecond deadline, 2nd April- Final deadline, 1st May
We aim to notify authors of acceptance within two weeks of each submission deadline.
All contributions will receive at least 2 reviews. We encourage all suitable submissions, either new or previously published work, and interdisciplinary thinking. We will award prizes (gift vouchers) for the best poster, best demonstration, and best video. This will be judged jointly by the Contributions Committee through their reviews, and the Organizers on site.
There will be a chance to win a LIMO Cobot worth £4000 for all participants that attend the workshop. Details will be provided in due course.
Make sure to register for the conference at https://2024.ieee-icra.org/registration/ in addition to submitting your abstracts, demos and videos to the forms above.
Further information about the poster and 1-minute pitch will be updated in due course.
Organizers
Sponsored By
The workshop is supported by the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Multi-Robot Systems.