In this book the use of ER techniques for the design of self-organising group behaviours, for both simulated and real robots is introduced. The book tries to mediate between two apparently opposed perspectives: engineering and cognitive science. The experiments presented in the book and the results obtained contribute to the assessment of ER not only as a design tool, but also as a methodology for modelling and understanding intelligent adaptive behaviours.

An authoritative overview of current research in this exciting interdisciplinary field.

Studies on robotics applications have grown substantially in recent years, with swarm robotics being a relatively new area of research. Inspired by studies in swarm intelligence and robotics, swarm robotics facilitates interactions between robots as well as their interactions with the environment. The Handbook of Research on Design, Control, and Modeling of Swarm Robotics is a collection of the most important research achievements in swarm robotics thus far, covering the growing areas of design, control, and modeling of swarm robotics. This handbook serves as an essential resource for researchers, engineers, graduates, and senior undergraduates with interests in swarm robotics and its applications.

This book provides an introduction to Swarm Robotics, which is the application of methods from swarm intelligence to robotics. It goes on to present methods that allow readers to understand how to design large-scale robot systems by going through many example scenarios on topics such as aggregation, coordinated motion (flocking), task allocation, self-assembly, collective construction, and environmental monitoring. The author explains the methodology behind building multiple, simple robots and how the complexity emerges from the multiple interactions between these robots such that they are able to solve difficult tasks. The book can be used as a short textbook for specialized courses or as an introduction to Swarm Robotics for graduate students, researchers, and professionals who want a concise introduction to the field.

In this book the use of ER techniques for the design of self-organising group behaviours, for both simulated and real robots is introduced. The book tries to mediate between two apparently opposed perspectives: engineering and cognitive science. The experiments presented in the book and the results obtained contribute to the assessment of ER not only as a design tool, but also as a methodology for modelling and understanding intelligent adaptive behaviours.

Today, autonomous robots are used in a rather limited range of applications such as exploration of inaccessible locations, cleaning floors, mowing lawns etc. However, ongoing hardware improvements (and human fantasy) steadily reveal new robotic applications of significantly higher sophistication. For such applications, the crucial bottleneck in the engineering process tends to shift from physical boundaries to controller generation. As an attempt to automatize this process, Evolutionary Robotics has successfully been used to generate robotic controllers of various types. However, a major challenge of the field remains the evolution of truly complex behavior. Furthermore, automatically created controllers often lack analyzability which makes them useless for safety-critical applications. In this book, a simple controller model based on Finite State Machines is proposed which allows a straightforward analysis of evolved behaviors. To increase the model's evolvability, a procedure is introduced which, by adapting the genotype-phenotype mapping at runtime, efficiently traverses both the behavioral search space as well as (recursively) the search space of genotype-phenotype mappings. Furthermore, a data-driven mathematical framework is proposed which can be used to calculate the expected success of evolution in complex environments.

These proceedings contain the papers presented at ANTS 2010, the 7th Int- national Conference on Swarm Intelligence, organized by IRIDIA, CoDE, U- versitéLibre de Bruxelles,Brussels, Belgium, during September 8–10,2010.The ANTS series started in 1998 with the First International Workshop on Ant Colony Optimization (ANTS 1998), which attracted more than 50 participants. Since then ANTS, which is held bi-annually, has gradually become an inter- tional forum for researchers in the wider ?eld of swarm intelligence. In the past (since 2004), this development has been acknowledged by the inclusion of the term“SwarmIntelligence” (nextto“AntColonyOptimization”)intheconference title. This year's ANTS conference was o?cially devoted to the ?eld of swarm intelligence as a whole, without any bias towards speci?c research directions. As a result, the title of the conference was changed to “The International Conf- ence on SwarmIntelligence.” This name change is already in place this year,and future ANTS conferences will continue to use the new title. Thisvolumecontainsthebestpapersselectedoutof99submissions.Ofthese, 28 were accepted as full-length papers, while 27 were accepted as short papers. This corresponds to an overall acceptance rate of 56%. Also included in this volume are 14 extended abstracts. Of the full-length papers, 15 were selected for oral presentation at the c- ference. All other contributions, including short papers and extended abstracts, werepresentedin the formof poster presentations.Following the conference,the journal Swarm Intelligence will publish extended versions of some of the best papers presented at the conference.

Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) now provide mature optimization tools that have successfully been applied to many problems, from designing antennas to complete robots, and provided many human-competitive results. In robotics, the integration of EAs within the engineer’s toolbox made tremendous progress in the last 20 years and proposes new methods to address challenging problems in various setups: modular robotics, swarm robotics, robotics with non-conventional mechanics (e.g. high redundancy, dynamic motion, multi-modality), etc. This book takes its roots in the workshop on "New Horizons in Evolutionary Design of Robots" that brought together researchers from Computer Science and Robotics during the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-2009) in Saint Louis (USA). This book features extended contributions from the workshop, thus providing various examples of current problems and applications, with a special emphasis on the link between Computer Science and Robotics. It also provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to Evolutionary Robotics after 20 years of maturation as well as thoughts and considerations from several major actors in the field. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the current trends and challenges in Evolutionary Robotics for the next decade.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 15th Italian Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation, WIVACE 2021, held in Winterthur, Switzerland, in September 2022. The 14 full papers and 10 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Networks; Droplets, Fluids, and Synthetic Biology; Robot Systems; Computer Vision and Computational Creativity; Semantic Search; Artificial Medicine and Pharmacy; Trade and Finance; Ethics in Computational Modelling. Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 22, and 24 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The academic community is currently facing the challenge of navigating the complexities of swarm robotics. This field demands understanding the design, control, and coordination of autonomous robotic swarms. The intricacies of developing algorithms that facilitate communication, cooperation, and adaptation among simple individual agents remain a formidable obstacle. Addressing issues like task allocation, formation control, path planning, and decentralized decision-making are pivotal to unlocking the true potential of swarm robotics. Bio-inspired Swarm Robotics and Control: Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Strategies immerses readers in the cutting-edge realm of swarm robotics, a discipline inspired by the intricate choreography observed in biological systems like insect colonies, bird flocks, and fish schools. Encompassing a rich array of bio-inspired algorithms, mechanisms, and strategies, the text elucidates how robots can communicate, cooperate, and adapt within dynamic environments. The book propels robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence advancements by fostering interdisciplinary connections and charting a course toward more efficient and resilient multi-robot systems. This book is ideal for biologists, engineers, and computer scientists to join forces in unlocking the full potential of swarm robotics.