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All Outputs (114)

Self-assembly in heterogeneous modular robots (2012)
Presentation / Conference
Liu, W., & Winfield, A. F. (2012, November). Self-assembly in heterogeneous modular robots. Paper presented at International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

This paper describes the distributed self-assembly of a multi-robot ‘organism’ from a swarm of autonomous heterogeneous modular mobile robots. A distributed self-assembly strategy based on a symbol sequence representation is proposed. Constructed fro... Read More about Self-assembly in heterogeneous modular robots.

Building safer robots: Safety driven control (2012)
Journal Article
Harper, C., Woodman, R., Winfield, A. F., Harper, C., & Fraser, M. (2012). Building safer robots: Safety driven control. International Journal of Robotics Research, 31(13), 1603-1626. https://doi.org/10.1177/0278364912459665

In recent years there has been a concerted effort to address many of the safety issues associated with physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). However, a number of challenges remain. For personal robots, and those intended to operate in unstructured... Read More about Building safer robots: Safety driven control.

Towards temporal verification of swarm robotic systems (2012)
Journal Article
Dixon, C., Winfield, A. F., Fisher, M., & Zeng, C. (2012). Towards temporal verification of swarm robotic systems. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 60(11), 1429-1441. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2012.03.003

A robot swarm is a collection of simple robots designed to work together to carry out some task. Such swarms rely on the simplicity of the individual robots; the fault tolerance inherent in having a large population of identical robots; and the self-... Read More about Towards temporal verification of swarm robotic systems.

Open Science: A New "Trust Technology"? (2012)
Journal Article
Grand, A., Wilkinson, C., Bultitude, K., & Winfield, A. F. (2012). Open Science: A New "Trust Technology"?. Science Communication, 34(5), 679-689. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547012443021

The emerging practice of open science, which makes the entire process of a scientific investigation available, could extend membership of the research community to new, public audiences, who do not have access to science's long-established trust mech... Read More about Open Science: A New "Trust Technology"?.

It feels like the right thing to do: Ethical perspectives of open science (2012)
Book Chapter
Grand, A., Wilkinson, C., Bultitude, K., & Winfield, A. F. (2012). It feels like the right thing to do: Ethical perspectives of open science. In B. Trench, & M. Bucchi (Eds.), Quality, Honesty and Beauty in Science and Technology Communication PCST 2012 Book of Papers (315-318). Observa Science in Society

Environment-driven distributed evolutionary adaptation in a population of autonomous robotic agents (2012)
Journal Article
Bredeche, N., Montanier, J. M., Liu, W., & Winfield, A. F. (2012). Environment-driven distributed evolutionary adaptation in a population of autonomous robotic agents. Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems, 18(1), 101-129. https://doi.org/10.1080/13873954.2011.601425

This article is concerned with a fixed-size population of autonomous agents facing unknown, possibly changing, environments. The motivation is to design an embodied evolutionary algorithm that can cope with the implicit fitness function hidden in the... Read More about Environment-driven distributed evolutionary adaptation in a population of autonomous robotic agents.

Emergent swarm morphology control of wireless networked mobile robots (2012)
Book Chapter
Winfield, A. F., & Nembrini, J. (2012). Emergent swarm morphology control of wireless networked mobile robots. In R. Doursat, H. Sayama, & O. Michel (Eds.), Morphogenetic Engineering (239-271). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33902-8_10

We describe a new class of decentralised control algorithms that link local wireless connectivity to low-level robot motion control in order to maintain both swarm aggregation and connectivity, which we term “coherence”, in unbounded space. We invest... Read More about Emergent swarm morphology control of wireless networked mobile robots.

On embodied memetic evolution and the emergence of behavioural traditions in Robots (2011)
Journal Article
Winfield, A. F., & Erbas, M. D. (2011). On embodied memetic evolution and the emergence of behavioural traditions in Robots. Memetic Computing, 3(4), 261-270. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12293-011-0063-x

This paper describes ideas and initial experiments in embodied imitation using e-puck robots, developed as part of a project whose aim is to demonstrate the emergence of artificial culture in collective robot systems. Imitated behaviours (memes) will... Read More about On embodied memetic evolution and the emergence of behavioural traditions in Robots.

The distributed co-evolution of an embodied simulator and controller for swarm robot behaviours (2011)
Presentation / Conference
O'Dowd, P., Winfield, A. F., & Studley, M. (2011, September). The distributed co-evolution of an embodied simulator and controller for swarm robot behaviours. Paper presented at IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011), San Francisco, USA

Embodied fitness assessment of robotic controllers is slow but grounded, while assessment in a simulated environment is fast but can run foul of the ‘reality gap’. We present a distributed co-evolutionary method to adapt the environmental model of an... Read More about The distributed co-evolution of an embodied simulator and controller for swarm robot behaviours.

Interactive robots in experimental biology (2011)
Journal Article
Krause, J., Winfield, A. F., & Deneubourg, J. L. (2011). Interactive robots in experimental biology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 26(7), 369-375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.03.015

Interactive robots have the potential to revolutionise the study of social behaviour because they provide several methodological advances. In interactions with live animals, the behaviour of robots can be standardised, morphology and behaviour can be... Read More about Interactive robots in experimental biology.

Open-hardware e-puck Linux extension board for experimental swarm robotics research (2011)
Journal Article
Liu, W., & Winfield, A. F. (2011). Open-hardware e-puck Linux extension board for experimental swarm robotics research. Microprocessors and Microsystems, 35(1), 60-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micpro.2010.08.002

In this paper we describe the implementation of a Linux extension board for the e-puck educational mobile robot, designed to enhance the computation, memory and networking performance of the robot at very low cost. The extension board is based on a 3... Read More about Open-hardware e-puck Linux extension board for experimental swarm robotics research.

Muddying the waters or clearing the stream? Open Science as a communication medium (2010)
Presentation / Conference
Grand, A., Bultitude, K., Wilkinson, C., & Winfield, A. F. (2010, December). Muddying the waters or clearing the stream? Open Science as a communication medium. Paper presented at Public Communication of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India

Open Science is an approach to the conduct of science in which the whole of an ongoing scientific investigation – data, ideas, questions, plans, results and more – is made available online. Open Science began as a way to facilitate the workings of mu... Read More about Muddying the waters or clearing the stream? Open Science as a communication medium.

Autonomous morphogenesis in self-assembling robots using IR-based sensing and local communications (2010)
Journal Article
Liu, W., & Winfield, A. F. (2010). Autonomous morphogenesis in self-assembling robots using IR-based sensing and local communications. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 6234 LNCS, 107-118. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15461-4_10

This paper presents a simple decentralised morphology control mechanism for a swarm of self-assembling robots. Each robot in the system is fully autonomous and controlled using a behaviour-based approach with only infrared-based local sensing and com... Read More about Autonomous morphogenesis in self-assembling robots using IR-based sensing and local communications.

On open science and public engagement with engineering (2010)
Presentation / Conference
Grand, A., Wilkinson, C., Bultitude, K., & Winfield, A. F. (2010, September). On open science and public engagement with engineering. Paper presented at European Association for Studies in Science and Technology, Trento, Italy

Open Science is an emerging approach to the conduct of science, technology and engineering projects, in which information about the whole of an ongoing investigation is made available on and through the Internet. Adopting an Open Science approach mea... Read More about On open science and public engagement with engineering.

Modeling and optimization of adaptive foraging in swarm robotic systems (2010)
Journal Article
Liu, W., & Winfield, A. F. (2010). Modeling and optimization of adaptive foraging in swarm robotic systems. International Journal of Robotics Research, 29(14), 1743-1760. https://doi.org/10.1177/0278364910375139

Understanding the effect of individual parameters on the collective performance of swarm robotic systems in order to design and optimize individual robot behaviors is a significant challenge. In this paper we present a macroscopic probabilistic model... Read More about Modeling and optimization of adaptive foraging in swarm robotic systems.

Safety control architecture for personal robots: Behavioural suppression with deliberative control (2010)
Presentation / Conference
Woodman, R., Winfield, A., Harper, C., & Fraser, M. (2010, June). Safety control architecture for personal robots: Behavioural suppression with deliberative control. Paper presented at 7th IARP Workshop on Technical Challenges for Dependable Robots in Human Environments (DRHE), Toulouse, France

This paper presents a novel robot control architecture for use with personal robots, and argues its potential for improving the safety of these types of system, when compared to existing approaches. The proposed architecture design separates the cont... Read More about Safety control architecture for personal robots: Behavioural suppression with deliberative control.

Towards accelerated distributed evolution for adaptive behaviours in swarm robotics (2010)
Book Chapter
O'Dowd, P., Winfield, A. F., & Studley, M. (2010). Towards accelerated distributed evolution for adaptive behaviours in swarm robotics. In T. Belpaeme, G. Bugmann, C. Melhuish, & M. Witkowski (Eds.), Proceedings of Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems 2010 (169-175). University of Plymouth

The major problem facing swarm robotics is that of design. A recent promising approach is the application of evolutionary algorithms to solve the problem of decomposing group behaviour to that of interacting individual behaviours. This paper presents... Read More about Towards accelerated distributed evolution for adaptive behaviours in swarm robotics.

You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking about you (2010)
Book Chapter
Winfield, A. F. (2010). You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking about you. In Y. Wilks (Ed.), Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues (201-208). John Benjamins

The projected ubiquity of personal companion robots raises a range of interesting but also challenging questions. There can be little doubt that an effective artificial companion, whether embodied or not, will need to be both sensitive to the emotion... Read More about You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking about you.