News
2015–16
2015–16
The DiODe Team says Merry Christmas 2016
15 December 2016Another way to get into the spirit of Christmas. Enjoy!
Multiscale modelling plenary
5 November 2016James gave a plenary lecture at the second course on Multiscale Integration in Biological Systems at the Institut Curie in November, in which he demonstrated an early prototype of the DiODe project’s new software tool for modelling collective behaviour.
DARS 2016 keynote
3 November 2016
James gave the opening keynote at Distributed Autonomous and Robotics Systems 2016 in London, on collective decision-making in social insect colonies and robot swarms. Giovanni’s work on value-sensitive decision-making in robot swarms featured and was also included separately in the conference proceedings.
Updated video on YouTube: collective decision-making of a swarm of robots
5 October 2016A swarm of 150 Kilobot robots takes a value-sensitive decentralised decision between two options (red and blue). The swarm must select the best quality option if the quality is higher than a given threshold (in this study, greater than 1.5). In this experiment, the options have quality v=5 thus the swarm makes a decision for the option blue.
The overlaying coloured circles show the two options localised in the environment. The options are signalled through two static Kilobot robots acting as beacons that send infrared messages with the option’s ID and quality.
The robots light up their LED in a colour that corresponds to their internal commitment state: green for the uncommitted state and red and blue for commitment to the option of the respective colour.
Supplementary video of the paper:
Reina, A, Bose, T, Trianni, V and Marshall, J A R (2016) ‘Effects of spatiality on value-sensitive decisions made by robot swarms’, DARS 2016.
Support to build smart arena
1 October 2016Chelsea Sabo and Alex Cope who were previously working on the Green Brain project have joined the DiODe project to help build a smart arena for the 900 Kilobots we have at Sheffield Robotics.
New PhD student joined the DiODe project
26 September 2016Aldo Encarnacion joined the DiODe team to work on the mathematical modelling of cellular decision-making. The main part of his PhD project will involve the development of a theory that understands metabolic pathways in terms of decision-making strategies.
Postdoc position in Collective Robotics
27 July 2016Open position as a research associate in Collective Robotics for one year. Application deadline 11 August 2016. More information
Swarm deadlock for symmetric choices over three or more options
27 July 2016Late breaking paper accepted at SAB 2016: ‘Swarm deadlock for symmetric choices over three or more options’ by Andreagiovanni Reina, James A R Marshall and Thomas Bose.
A bifurcation analysis of the model shows that for previous parameterisations there is always decision deadlock in the case of three or more same-quality options.
This result motivates the change of parameterisation with respect to previous work.
Value-sensitive decisions made by a 150 robot swarm
27 July 2016Fresh paper submitted to DARS 2016: ‘Effects of spatiality on value-sensitive decisions made by robot swarms’ by Andreagiovanni Reina, Thomas Bose, Vito Trianni and James A R Marshall.
In the video below, a swarm of 150 Kilobot robots takes a value-sensitive decentralised decision between two options (red and blue). The swarm must select the best quality option if the quality is higher than a given threshold (in this study, greater than 1.5). In this experiment, the options have quality v=5 thus the swarm makes a decision for one option (in this case, the blue option).
The overlaying coloured circles show the two options localised in the environment. The options are signalled through two static Kilobot robots acting as beacons that send infrared messages with the option’s ID and quality.
The robots light up their LED in a colour that corresponds to their internal commitment state: green for the uncommitted state and red and blue for commitment to the option of the respective colour.
DiODe project documentation on YouTube
2 May 2016The progress of the DiODe project can now be followed on YouTube. Below you see a video which shows the initial state of setting up a tracking system for the Kilobots, the micro-robots we use to investigate consensus decision-making experimentally.
In the future we will post new videos that show the Kilobots in action. At the same time we want to use the DiODe YouTube channel to document the project’s chronology.
PhD studentship available in collective behaviour and robotics
1 December 2015The DiODe project is offering a PhD studentship, with a closing deadline of 2 February 2016.
Two new team members
1 September 2015The DiODe project welcomes new team members Thomas Bose and Giovanni Reina.
DiODe project starts
1 August 2015The DiODe project officially starts today and will be based in Sheffield Robotics for its five-year duration.