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 | Talk Title |
| Morning Session | |||
| 08:45-09:05 | Welcome and Challenge Introduction for the Robot Prize | Organisers | |
| 09:05-09:50 | Panel 1 | Chair – Roderich Gross 1. Alyssa Pierson 2. Amanda Porok 3. Tin Lun Lam 4. Michael Otte | What stereotypes need to be debunked? |
| 09:50-10:00 | Interactive Game Introduction | Louisa Di Felice | The Human Swarm Game |
| 10:00-10:30 | Break / Demonstrations | ||
| 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 | Ani Hsieh | Robot Collectives for Environmental Stewardship |
| 11:30-12:00 | Talk: Stereotype 3 | Eduardo Castello | Blockchain-based swarms: past, present, and especially future |
| 12:00-12:30 | Poster Flash Talks | Participants | 1-minute flash talk to provide an introduction to posters |
| 12:30-13:30 | Lunch / Poster Discussion / Demonstations | ||
| 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 | Takeshi Ikegami | Emergence of Individuality from Collective Autonomous Robots |
| 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 | Poster Discussion / Demonstrations | ||
| 15:45-16:15 | Talk: Stereotype 7 | Yasuharu Kunii | Intelligent Multi Agents for Exploration and Settlement in Unknown and Unexplored Areas |
| 16:15-17:00 | Panel 2 | Chair – Sabine Hauert 1. Gennaro Notomista 2. Andreas Kolling 3. Mohammad Soorati | Swarms for People |
| 17:00-17:10 | Interactive Game Conclusion | Louisa di Felice | |
| 17:10-17:20 | Vote for the Robot Prize | Organisers | |
| 17:20-17:30 | Awards and Closing | Organisers |
Speakers
Accepted Contributions
Posters
Google Drive link to Posters and Abstracts
- Fuda van Diggelen; Eliseo Ferrante. Vrije Universiteit. Evolving Hebbian learning rules in heterogeneous robot swarms for self-adapting emergent sensing.
- Zili Tang, Yuming Feng, Meng Guo. Peking University. Non-prehensile Object Transportation via Multiple Robots.
- Veit-Lorenz Heuthe, Emanuele Panizon, Hongri Gu, Clemens Bechinger. University of Konstanz. Reinforcement Learning in Swarm Microrobotics: Enabling Collective Transport Task.
- Afzal Ahmad, Daniel Bonilla Licea, Giuseppe Silano, Tomas Baca and Martin Saska. Czech Technical University. PACNav: Enhancing Collective Navigation for UAV Swarms in Communication-Challenged Environments.
- Miquel Kegeleirs, David Garzón Ramos, Guillermo Legarda Herranz, Ilyes Gharbi, Jeanne Szpirer, Ken Hasselmann, Lorenzo Garattoni, Gianpiero Francesca, Mauro Birattari. IRIDIA, Université libre de Bruxelles. Leveraging swarm capabilities to assist other systems.
- Aoran Jiao, Tanmay P. Patel, Sanjmi Khurana, Anna-Mariya Korol, Lukas Brunke, Vivek K. Adajania, Utku Culha, Siqi Zhou, and Angela P. Schoellig. Technical University of Munich. Swarm-GPT: Combining Large Language Models with Safe Motion Planning for Robot Choreography Design.
- John Smith, Takashi Ikegami. University of Tokyo and Alternative Machine Inc. johnbot -Swarm Dynamics of Simple Robots with Inherent Inhomogeneity.
- Mattia Catellani and Lorenzo Sabattini. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Two-Level Control for Cooperative Coverage by a Multi-UAV System.
- Mohsen Raoufi, Pawel Romanczuk, Heiko Hamann. University of Konstanz. Intrinsic Individuality in Swarm Robots.
- Bowen Kou, Ignacio Carlucho. University of Bristol. A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Based MIMO PID Controller for Single Robot.
- Vivek K. Adajania, Siqi Zhou, Arun Kumar Singh, and Angela P. Schoellig. University of Toronto. An Alternating Minimization Approach to Scalable and Safe Swarms.
- Yuxuan Song, Mališa Vučinić, Thomas Watteyne. INRIA, Paris. Standards-based Remote Attestation for Internet-of-Things Swarms.
- Genki Miyauchi, Alan G. Millard, Yuri K. Lopes, Roderich Gross. The University of Sheffield. Let’s Share Our Robots! Dynamically Controlling a Swarm of Robots Among Multiple Human Operators.
- Silvia Terrile, Razanne Abu-Aisheh, Oleksii Kulykov, Tom Didiot-Cook, Richard Suphapol Diteesawat, Sabine Hauert and Jonathan Rossiter. University of Bristol. DRESS: Distributed Robotic Enhanced Soft System for Non-Uniform Object Transportation.
- Vivek Shankar Varadharajan, Karthik Soma, Giovanni Beltrame. Ecole Polytechnique Montreal. Breaking Stereotypes: Hierarchical Structures in Robot Swarms.
- Suet Lee, Sabine Hauert. University of Bristol. A Data-Driven Method to Identify Fault Mitigation Strategies in Robot Swarms.
- Ayodeji O. Abioye, Aleksandra Landowska, William Hunt, Horia Maior, Sarvapali D. Ramchurn, Mohammad Naiseh, Alec Banks, and Mohammad D. Soorati. University of Southampton. Adaptive Human-Swarm Interaction based on Workload Measurement using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.
- Razanne Abu-Aisheh, Shyamli Suneesh, Tom Didiot-Cook, Simon Jones, Emanuel Nunez Sardinha, Marcela Munera and Sabine Hauert. University of Bristol. Assessing the Impact of Swarm Motion on Human Trust in Robot Swarms.
- Khulud Alharthi, Zahraa S Abdallah, and Sabine Hauert. University of Bristol. Learning understandable controllers from single-shot demonstrations of robot swarms in various environments.
- Khulud Alharthi, Suet Lee, Simon Jones, Sabine Hauert. University of Bristol. Resist/Influence! Evolving for Co-existing Subcultures in Robot Swarms.
- Samratul Fuady, Danesh Tarapore, Shoaib Ehsan, and Mohammad D. Soorati. University of Southampton. Collective Decision-Making on Task Feasibility.
- Dipam Patel, Rashmi Bhaskara, Phu Pham, Aniket Bera. Purdue University. Autonomous Search and Rescue with Sparse Robot Swarms using DroNeRF and Recurrent Policy Gradients.
- Neshika Wijewardhane, Eugenia Piddini, Sabine Hauert. University of Bristol. Light-Based Swarms Driving Wound Healing.
Videos
Google Drive link to Videos
- Zili Tang, Yuming Feng, Meng Guo. Peking University. Non-prehensile Object Transportation via Multiple Robots.
- Miquel Kegeleirs, David Garzón Ramos, Guillermo Legarda Herranz, Ilyes Gharbi, Jeanne Szpirer, Lorenzo Garattoni, Gianpiero Francesca, Mauro Birattari. IRIDIA, Université libre de Bruxelles. Leveraging swarm capabilities to assist other systems: Demonstration video.
- John Smith, Norihiro Maruyama, Takashi Ikegami. University of Tokyo and Alternative Machine Inc. johnbot -Swarm Dynamics of Simple Robots with Inherent Inhomogeneity.
- Tin Lun Lam, Da Zhao, Haobo Luo, Yuxiao Tu, Chongxi Meng. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Overview of the snail robot system.
- Lluc Bono, Muhanad Alkilabi, Andreagiovanni Reina. University of Konstanz. Emergent Orchestra.
- Raina Zakir, Marco Dorigo, Andreagiovanni Reina. University of Konstanz. Breaking Swarm Stereotype: Noise as an Asset Rather Than a Hindrance.
- Vivek K. Adajania, Siqi Zhou, Arun Kumar Singh, and Angela P. Schoellig. University of Toronto. An Alternating Minimization Approach to Scalable and Safe Swarms.
- Yuxiao Tu, Tin Lun Lam. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. FreeSN: A Freeform Strut-node Structured Modular Self-reconfigurable Robot.
Demonstrations
- John Smith, Takashi Ikegami. University of Tokyo and Alternative Machine Inc. johnbot -Swarm Dynamics of Simple Robots with Inherent Inhomogeneity.
- Said Alvarado-Marin, Alexandre Abadie, Thomas Watteyne, Filip Maksimovic. INRIA, Paris. DotBot: Miniature Swarm Robotics Platform.
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 on the workshop day.
Organizers
On the Day
Google Drive link to Photos
Sponsored By
The workshop is supported by the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Multi-Robot Systems.