Individual, social and evolutionary adaptation in collective systems
(2013)
Book Chapter
Alan Winfield's Outputs (118)
Distributed autonomous morphogenesis in a self-assembling robotic system (2012)
Book Chapter
We present distributed morphogenesis control strategies in a swarm of robots able to autonomously assemble into 3D symbiotic organisms to perform specific tasks. Each robot in such a system can work autonomously, while teams of robots can self-assemb... Read More about Distributed autonomous morphogenesis in a self-assembling robotic system.
On fault tolerance and scalability of swarm robotic systems (2012)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
This paper challenges the common assumption that swarm robotic systems are robust and scalable by default. We present an analysis based on both reliability modelling and experimental trials of a case study swarm performing team work, in which failure... Read More about On fault tolerance and scalability of swarm robotic systems.
Self-assembly in heterogeneous modular robots (2012)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
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
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
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
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
Robotics: A very short introduction (2012)
Book
Environment-driven distributed evolutionary adaptation in a population of autonomous robotic agents (2012)
Journal Article
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
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
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 Contribution
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
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.
Towards imitation-enhanced reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems (2011)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
Open-hardware e-puck Linux extension board for experimental swarm robotics research (2011)
Journal Article
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 Contribution
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)
Presentation / Conference Contribution
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 Contribution
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
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.