Abstract:
In this talk, we consider the problem of designing behavioral rules for groups of robots of extreme simplicity. First, we show how "computation-free" swarms of robots, with only 1 bit of sensory information, can accomplish tasks such as multi-agent rendezvous. Then, we study "computation-free" modular reconfigurable robots, that is, systems where the units to be controlled are physically coupled. We conclude by discussing current limitations of the approach and possible extensions.
Bio:
Roderich Gross is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield, and in 2018 has been a Visiting Scientist at CSAIL, MIT. He received a Ph.D. degree in engineering science in 2007 from Université libre de Bruxelles in 2007, and was a JSPS Fellow (Tokyo Institute of
Technology) and a Marie Curie Fellow (EPFL & Unilever). He has made contributions to the coordination of swarm and reconfigurable robots, and invented a machine learning method called Turing Learning. Dr Gross has served as the General Chair of DARS 2016, Editor of IROS 2015-19, and as an Associate Editor of Swarm Intelligence, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and ICRA 2020.