SAB'04 (From Animals to Animats)

Workshop on Swarm Robotics

July 17, 2004
Santa Monica, CA, USA

Organized by: Erol Sahin and William Spears

Presentations made at the workshop are available below!
Photos from the workshop!



 Proceedings of the workshop is published as:
Swarm Robotics
SAB 2004 International Workshop, Santa Monica, CA, USA, July 17, 2004, Revised Selected Papers
Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3342
Sahin, Erol; Spears, William M. (Eds.)
2005, IX, 175 p., Softcover
ISBN: 3-540-24296-1


Scope

Swarm robotics can be defined as the study of how a swarm of relatively simple physically embodied agents  can be contructed to collectively accomplish tasks that are beyond the capabilities of a single one. Different from other studies on multi-robot systems, swarm robotics emphasizes self-organization and emergence  while keeping in mind the issues of scalability and robustness. These emphases promote the use of relatively simple robots, equipped with localized sensing abilities, scalable communication mechanisms and the exploration of decentralized control strategies.

With the recent technological advances, study of robotic swarms is becoming more and more feasible. There are already a number of on-going projects that aim to develop and/or control large numbers of physically embodied agents. The workshop brought together researchers in an effort to review the on-going studies, discuss and identify the research directions in swarm robotics.

Swarm Robotics Requirements

One of the main motivations behind this workshop has been the need for a clarification of this newly emerging field. Although we would like to have a discussion on what the term "swarm robotics" should mean in relation to other terms  such as "multi-robot systems", "distributed robotic systems", "collective robotics", etc., here we put forward a set of minimal requirements for the field:
  • The robotic system should consist of large numbers of robots (or the studies should be applicable to the control of large robotic swarms)
  • The system should consist of relatively few homogeneous groups of robots, and that the number of robots in each group be large.
  • The robots should be relatively simple and incapable such that the tasks tackled require the co-operation of the individual robots.
  • The robots should only have localized and limited sensing and communication abilities.

Presentations

Below you can access the presentations made at the workshop in different formats for your convenience (.ppt: MS Powerpoint format, .pdf: Adobe Acrobat format, .sxi: OpenOffice format). The original format submitted by the authors is indicated with bold. Also, some of the movies shown during the presentations are available.
    Title
    		 Speaker
    		 Presentation
    		 Movies
    From Swarm Intelligence to Swarm Robotics by  Gerardo Beni, University of California at Riverside, CA, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi
    Swarm Robotics: From sources of inspiration to domains of application by Erol Sahin, KOVAN, Dept. of Computer Eng., METU, Turkey. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi
    Communication, Learning and Diversity: Cornerstones of Swarm Behavior by Tucker Balch, Georgia Tech., GA, USA. .pdf 
    The Swarm-bots Project by Vito Trianni, IRIDIA, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi movies
    Pheromone Robotics and the Logic of Virtual Pheromones by David Payton, HRL Labs, CA, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi movies
    Distributed localization and mapping with a robotic swarm  by Ihsan Ecemis, Icosystem Corp., MA, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi movies
    The I-Swarm project: Intelligent Small World Autonomous Robots for Micro-manipulation by Joerg Seyfried, IPR, Universitaet Karlsruhe(TH), Germany. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi movies
    Artificial Physics Framework by William Spears, University of Wyoming, WY, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi
    Lattice Formation in Mobile Autonomous Sensor Arrays by David Payton, HRL Labs, CA, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi
    Swarming behavior using Probabilistic Roadmap Techniques by O. Burchan Bayazit, Washington Univ. at St. Louis, WA, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi
    Toward dependable swarms by Alan Winfield, University of West England, U.K. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi
    		 movies
    A Mathematical Approach to Modeling Swarm Robotic Systems by Kristina Lerman, USC Information Sciences Institute, CA, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi
    Order by Disordered Actions in Swarms by  Gerardo Beni, University of California at Riverside, CA, USA. .ppt | .pdf | .sxi

    Editorial board

    • Tucker Balch, Georgia Tech., GA, USA
    • O. Burchan Bayazit, Washington Univ. at St. Louis, WA, USA
    • Gerardo Beni, University of California at Riverside, CA, USA
    • Marco Dorigo, IRIDIA, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
    • Paolo Gaudiano, Icosystem Corp., MA, USA
    • Alcherio Martinoli, EPFL, Switzerland, and Caltech, CA, USA
    • David Payton,  HRL Labs, CA, USA
    • Cem Unsal, Arris Group, CA, USA
    • Alan Winfield,  University of West England, UK
    • Joerg Seyfried, Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH), Germany

    Important dates

    Full paper submission:
    		 May 3, 2004
    Notification of acceptance: May 24, 2004
    Revised paper (to be distributed at the workshop):
    		 June 7, 2004
    SAB'04 conference:
    		 July 13-16, 2004
    Workshop: July 17, 2004
    Camera-ready manuscript (see below):
    		August 15, 2004

    Proceedings and manuscript preparation

    • The post-proceedings of the workshop is published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science State-of-the-Art Series as : Swarm Robotics SAB 2004 International Workshop, Santa Monica, CA, USA, July 17, 2004, Revised Selected Papers Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3342 Sahin, Erol; Spears, William M. (Eds.) 2005, IX, 175 p., Softcover, ISBN: 3-540-24296-1.
      lncs
    • The page limit for both types of papers is set to be 15. Since the papers will be published as a post-proceeding in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science series  the authors are expected to revise their papers according to reviewers comments and feedback from the workshop itself
      Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with the rules set in the Authors' Instructions page and be e-mailed to:

      erol
      		 @
      		 metu
      		 .
      		 edu
      		 .
      		 tr

      New:       You can find the latex templates for both the review and research papers here. Sample manuscripts generated by these templates are here. Please  read the README file provided.

    Venue

    The workshop is held in Los Angeles, CA, USA after the SAB'04 conference. More information is available at the SAB'04 web site.

    Related links


    • www.Swarm-robotics.org main page
    • Special issue of Autonomous Robots on Swarm Robotics (list of accepted papers and their abstracts are available)
      • http://journals.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5273460
    • The Swarm-bots project
    • Pheromone Robotics
    • The I-Swarm Project
    • CORO at Caltech


    Other

    • Up-to-date information about the workshop is available at: http://www.kovan.ceng.metu.edu.tr/swarm-robotics/
    • Printable copies of this Call for Papers are available in pdf and postscript.