oliver.obst.eu » Swarm Robotics

The First Australasian Workshop on Computation in Cyber-Physical Systems

oliver — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:19:06 +0000

You are invited to submit to and/or attend The First Australasian Workshop on Computation in Cyber-Physical Systems (CompCPS-2010).
We are organising this event here in Sydney, on the 15-16 July, in the Lecture Theatre at the CSIRO Marsfield site.

The name “cyber-physical system” (CPS) was chosen by the NSF and other United States federal agencies for systems that coherently combine computational and physical elements.

The CPS field builds up on knowledge and practical experiences of embedded systems, sensor networks, multi-robot teams, modular/swarm robotics, amorphous computing, programmable materials, evolvable/adaptive hardware, etc., and yet promise to form a unique field.

This Workshop will focus on distributed computation in CPS – the computation processes that integrate multiple data streams, compress and structure high-dimensional information, synchronise the distributed dynamics, adapt to topological changes within networks, optimise multiple sensorimotor loops, etc.

Several prominent invited speakers from Australia, Spain and USA will present different aspects of this rapidly developing research field.

Anyone interested in participating in the workshop is encouraged to submit a two-page extended abstract by May 16, 2010. Notifications will be sent by June 11, 2010 to all those who will be invited to the workshop. All accepted submissions will be allocated an oral presentation slot. See the Workshop Web Page for details.

cyber-physical systems, workshop, australia, call for papers, Sydney, australasia, sensor networks

Inverse Steering Behaviors

oliver — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:41:31 +0000

I was excited to find one of my approaches being used in a commercial product for emergency egress simulation, sold by a company in the US: Back in 2006, Heni, Jan and I published an approach we called Inverse Steering Behaviors in the chapter “Fast, Neat, and Under Control: Arbitrating Between Steering Behaviors” of AI Game Programming Wisdom 3. The technique builds on Steering Behaviors by Craig Reynolds – reactive procedures for physical agents (like robots or simulated creatures) to move in a lifelike way within dynamic environments. Developed in the late 80s, steering behaviors found applications for example in movies like Lord of the Rings. Our Inverse Steering Behaviors improve the arbitration between individual behaviors, which results in less collisions. Back when we did the work, we used the approach in our robotic soccer team for navigation and to dribble around opponents. The agent-based emergency evacuation simulation system sold by Thunderhead Engineering, is called Pathfinder.
There’s a free 30-day trial available, and also short video.

Watch the video.

steering behaviors, inverse steering, robotic soccer, emergency egress simulation

CFP: 9th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2008)

oliver — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:17:31 +0000

The Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems deals with new methodologies, algorithms, hardwares, system architectures to realize advanced distributed robotic systems. Topics include but are not limited to:

Architectures for teams of robots, Ambient Intelligence, Biologically inspired systems, Control issues in multi-robot systems, Distributed decision making/problem solving, Distributed/cooperative perception, Distributed planning, Distributed task execution, Human and robot interaction, Learning and adaptation in teams of robots, Multi-robot applications in exploration, search and rescue, Mobiligence (Emergence of Intelligence through Mobility), Modular robotics, Network robotics, Performance metrics for robot teams, Reconfigurable robots, Robot societies, Self-organizing robotic systems, Sensor networks, Swarm robotics, Task allocation.

The conference takes place in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, Nov. 17-19, 2008. Full paper submission is June 30, 2008. For details, check out the web page.

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