Robotics weekly meetings

Purpose

1. Community. Keep everyone updated as to what other work is going on in the lab
2. Research. Cross germination. Get feedback. Get help on problems. Get ideas.
3. Admin. Lab administration.

Format

1. Presentation & Discussion (30 - 50 mins)
   • Work you have been doing
   • Reading you have been doing in the context of your work
   • Other reading on something you are passionate about

Try and make your session as involving as possible for everyone:

• Send round material to be read beforehand.
• Ask people before the meeting what aspects of your work / reading they would like to know about or discuss.
• Think about implications of what you are presenting for the research direction of the lab as a whole - methodologies, technologies etc.

Timing & Attendance

The weekly meetings take place on

Tuesday at 14.00 (temporary time schedule)

Unless:

• A given Tuesday is a public holiday, or
• Something very important (like a Ph.D. defense) is overlapping.

If either should happen the meeting is postponed to the next day.

Please indicate on this wiki page if you are not going to be able to attend a meeting (no later than the Friday before).

If you forget to note your absence in advance you will be severely punished and will be forced to buy a nice, big cake for the following meeting.

Forthcoming Meetings

The schedule of the forthcoming robotics meetings can also be found in the IRIDIA calendar

Tuesday 21th Jun 2011 - Alessandro

Agenda

• Title: Self-Organized Flocking with a Heterogeneous Mobile Robot Swarm

Abstract

In this paper, we study self-organized flocking in a swarm of behaviorally heterogeneous mobile robots: aligning and non-aligning robots. Aligning robots are capable of agreeing on a common heading direction with other neighboring aligning robots. Conversely, non-aligning robots lack this capability. Studying this type of heterogeneity in self-organized flocking is important as it can support the design of a swarm with minimal hardware requirements. Through systematic simulations, we show that a heterogeneous group of aligning and non-aligning robots can achieve good performance in flocking behavior. We further show that the performance is affected not only by the proportion of aligning robots, but also by the way they integrate information about their neighbors as well as the motion control employed by the robots.

Reading material

People who will be absent

Ali

Tuesday 5th Jul 2011 - Nithin

Agenda

• Title:

Abstract

Reading material

People who will be absent

Past Meetings

Tuesday 7th Jun 2011 - Eliseo

Agenda

• Title: Information Transfer for Collective Decision-Making in Partially Informed Swarms of Robots

Abstract

This talk will consist of three parts. In the first part, I will sketch an informal, yet quite precise framework for studying collective decision-making in several swarm robotics collective behaviors. Within this framework, I will introduce the information transfer problem, a problem that is quite central in collective decision making and that represents the topic of my PhD. I will also present a taxonomy which classifies the possible mechanisms to achieve information transfer within a swarm robotics setting. In the second part, I will talk about information transfer for heading alignment in self-organized flocking. I will present my contributions that dealt with explicit communication strategies for tackling information transfer in different environmental settings. In the third and final part, I will briefly explain the current work that I have been doing on the information transfer problem, still in the context of self-organized flocking. Before concluding, I will talk about work on information transfer that I plan to do within (an)other collective behavior(s).

Reading material

• Flocking in stationary and non-stationary environments: a novel communication strategy for heading alignment PDF
• A self-adaptive communication strategy for self-organized flocking in stationary and non-stationary environment (ask Eliseo for preliminary pdf)

People who will be absent

• Ali :-(

Tuesday 17th May 2011 - Manuele

Agenda

• Manuele will rehearse the defense of his DEA thesis.
  • Title: Collective Transport with Obstacle Avoidance through Socially-Mediated Negotiation