IEEE 2007 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION

IEEE 2007 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION * APRIL 10-14, 2007 * ROMA, ITALY

Collective Behaviors inspired by Biological and Biochemical Systems

Full Day Workshop

Saturday, April 14
Location: Aula 21

Call for Contributions

Overview

This full day workshop brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to discuss modeling and control in biological and biochemical systems and the potential for establishing a paradigm for systematic modeling, analysis and synthesis of robotic behaviors. Biological and biochemical systems, although they are mainly regulated by local interactions, have the capacity to exhibit large scale collective behaviors. Their capabilities of scalability, modularity and robustness, to name a few, provide an inspiring source for new technologies. The scope of the workshop will span systems at the molecular and cellular level (for example, reaction-diffusion systems, biochemical regulatory networks) as well as the level of large organisms (for example, flocking and swarming behaviors). Panelists from academia will provide insight on the current state-of-the-art and future outlook. Panel discussions are used to complement panel presentations, where participants and panelists are invited to exchange ideas and identify research opportunities.

Topics

The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

● Large Scale Robotic Swarms
     ○ Communication
     ○ Computation
     ○ Control
● Biological and Biochemical Systems
     ○ Modeling
     ○ Analysis
● Distributed Systems
     ○ Controller Synthesis
     ○ Behavior Synthesis

Invited Speakers

Harry Asada, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
George Pappas, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Daniela Rus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Marco Dorigo, IRIDIA, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Alcherio Martinoli, EPFL, Switzerland
Kevin Lynch, Northwestern University, USA
Auke Jan Ijspeert, EPFL, Switzerland

Herbert Tanner, University of New Mexico, USA

Calin Belta, Boston University, USA

Pedro U. Lima, Institute for Systems and Robotics, Portugal

Invited Paper Contributions

Dimos V. Dimarogonas and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Contributed Papers

Carlos H. Caicedo-N. and Milos Zefran, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

Nikolaus Correll and Alcherio Martinoli, EPFL, Switzerland

Program

Time	Speaker	Title	Abstract
8:30 - 8:40	Vijay Kumar	Introduction
8:40 - 9:10	Kevin Lynch	Compiling Desired Collective Behaviors into Distributed Estimators and Controllers
9:10 - 9:40	Daniela Rus	Data-Driven Identification of Group Dynamics for Motion Prediction and Control	abstract
9:40 - 10:10	Savvas Loizou	Biologically Inspired Landmark Based Navigation	abstract
Coffee break
10:30 - 11:00	Alcherio Martinoli	A Nonspatial Multi-Level Modeling Methodology for Embedded Swarm-Intelligent Systems	abstract
11:00 - 11:30	Marco Dorigo	Report on some experiments with self-assembling robots: The swarm-bot experience
11:30 - 11:50	Herbert Tanner	Expressing Collective Behavior in Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems	abstract
11:50 - 12:10	Nikolaus Correll and Alcherio Martinoli	Modeling Self-Organized Aggregation in a Swarm of Miniature Robots
12:10 - 12:25	Panel Discussion	Bottom-up vs. top-down approaches to swarming robotics
Lunch break
14:00 - 14:30	Harry Asada	Stochastic Recruitment and Broadcast Feedback: Ensemble Behaviors of Cellular Stochastic Systems with Applications to Muscle Actuators and Angiogenesis Research	abstract
14:30 - 15:00	George Pappas	Controlling biological systems: the lactose regulation system of Escherichia coli	abstract
15:00 - 15:20	Carlos H. Caicedo-N. and Milos Zefran	Balancing Sensing and Coverage in Mobile Sensor Networks: Aggregation Based Approach
15:20 - 15:40	Dimos V. Dimarogonas and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos	Connectedness Preserving Distributed Swarm Aggregation for Multiple Kinematic Agents
Coffee break
16:10 - 16:40	Calin Belta	Towards Cellular Robotics	abstract
16:40 -17:10	Auke Jan Ijspeert	Learning to move with modular robots using central pattern generators and online optimization	abstract
17:10 -17:40	Pedro U. Lima	Cell Populations and Robot Swarms	abstract
17:40 – 18:00	Panel Discussion	Panel Discussion (Wrap up)

Organizers

Savvas Loizou and Vijay Kumar
University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Laboratory
sloizou@seas.upenn.edu
kumar@grasp.cis.upenn.edu
3330 Walnut Street
Levine Hall L465
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-6228

Links

The SWARMS Project: http://www.swarms.org/
GRASP Laboratory: http://www.grasp.upenn.edu/