---

Emerging Technologies Technical Committee

Task Force on Bio-Inspired Self-Organizing Collective Systems

Organizers

Chair:   Prof. Hideyasu Sasaki, Keio Research Institute at SFC, Keio University, Fujisawa, Japan. (E-mail: hsasaki _at_ uchicago _dot_ edu)

Vice-Chairs:   Prof. Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK. (E-mail: yaochu _dot_ jin _at_ surrey _dot_ ac _dot_ uk)

                         Dr. Zhengping Ji, Advanced Image Research Lab, Samsung, Pasadena, US. (E-mail: jizhengp _at_ gmail _dot_ com)

Mission

We are motivated to advance the research of bio-inspired solutions which have been explored in these decades since the advent of swarm intelligence. Many creatures on the globe live together in swarms. Individual creatures intelligently organize many tasks for their swarms without either external or global control. This self-organization is one of important phenomena observed in biological/ecological systems of swarms of creatures. Studying those self-organized collective systems inspires technical solutions which fulfil demands in human society and social dynamics. It is challenging and exciting to implement those solutions in an engineering manner. An exemplary solution has been pursued in robotic systems which support human activities. Robots or modules which interact with the individuals in swarms or groups accomplish various tasks without external or global control. How to establish self-organization for their collective systems is a promising research problem which is discussed in this task force.

The scope of our research topics covers multidisciplinary subjects: computer science and artificial intelligence (evolutionary computing, multi-agent systems, machine learning, and complex systems), electrical and mechanical engineering, robotics, cognitive science, and developmental and systems biology. In addition, this task force would like to provide a forum for discussions between academia and industries in the following research topics.

Research topics explored in this task force include, but are not limited to:

• Bio/Nature-inspired computing for self-organization in collective systems

• Distributed task allocation in collective systems

• Self-organization, self-reconfiguration, self-repairing, and self-assembly in modular robots, multi-agent pattern formation, and multi-agent flocking and consensus

• Swarm intelligence, Genetic Approaches, and Cellular Approaches for self-organization and self-assembly

• Morphogenesis in multi-agent systems

• Co-evolution of neural controller and body development of collective systems

• Cognitive network management and self-assembly of nanostructures

• Smart materials, swarm robotics, reconfigurable modular robots, and traffic control systems

Related Events

• Workshop at the Brain-Mind Institute Summer School (June 17 - July 5, July 15 - August 2) and International Conference on Brain-Mind (ICBM), July 27 - 28, 2013 (J. Weng)

• IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), Hyderabad, India, Jul 7 - Jul 10, 2013

• International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC), Nanning, China, Jul 28 - Jul 31, 2013

• International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2013 - Dallas), Dallas, TX, USA, Aug 4 - Aug 9, 2013

• IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG), Niagara Falls, ON Canada, Aug 11 - Aug 13, 2013

• IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL), Osaka, Japan, Aug 18 - Aug 22, 2013

• 2013 13th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI), Guildford, United Kingdom, Sep 9 - Sep 11, 2013

• 2013 International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing (ICIAP), Naples, Italy, Sep 11 - Sep 13, 2013

• IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CIBCB), Honolulu, HI USA, May 21 - May 24, 2014

• IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI), Beijing, China, Jul 6 - Jul 11, 2014

• IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), Beijing, China, Jul 6 - Jul 11, 2014

• IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), Beijing, China, Jul 6 - Jul 11, 2014

• IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG), Dortmund, Germany, Aug 26 - Aug 29, 2014

• IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI), Orlando, FL USA, Dec 9 - Dec 12, 2014

• Workshop on “Evo-Devo-Robo: Evolutionary Robotics and Developmental Robotics” at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), 2012 (Y. Jin)

• Special issue on Eighth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2012) , Springer, 2012. (R. Gross)

• Special issue on Cellular Automata in International Journal of General Systems (Taylor & Francis), Vol. 41, Issue 6 (2012) pp. 537-643 (A. Adamatzky)

Recent Books

• “Natural and Artificial Intelligence: Introduction to Computational Brain-Mind”, J. Weng, BMI Press, 2013.

  

• “Reaction-Diffusion Automata: Phenomenology, Localisations, Computation”, A. Adamatzky, Springer, 2013.

  

• “Morphogenetic Engineering: Toward Programmable Complex Systems”, R. Doursat, H. Sayama, O. Michel (eds.), Springer, 2012.

  

• “Bio-Inspired Self-Organizing Robotic Systems”, Y. Meng and Y. Jin (eds.), Springer, 2011

  

Task Force Committee

• Prof. Andrew Adamatzky, University of the West of England, UK.

• Dr. Roderich Gross, The University of Sheffield, UK.

• Dr. Serge Kernbach, Universität Stuttgart, Germany.

• Prof. Sanaz Mostaghim, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Germany.

• Prof. Hiroki Sayama, Binghamton University, USA.

• Dr. Thomas Schmickl, University of Graz, Austria.

• Prof. Wei-Min Shen, University of Southern California, USA.  

• Prof. Kasper Stoy, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark.

• Prof. Jon Timmis, University of York, UK.

• Prof. Juyang Weng, Michigan State University, USA.