Dario Floreano

Nicola Nosengo

Stories from the future of intelligent machines—from rescue drones to robot spouses—and accounts of cutting-edge research that could make it all possible. Tech prognosticators promised us robots—autonomous humanoids that could carry out any number of tasks. Instead, we have robot vacuum cleaners. But, as Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo report, advances in robotics could bring those rosy predictions closer to reality. A new generation of robots, directly inspired by the intelligence and bodies of living organisms, will be able not only to process data but to interact physically with humans and the environment. In this book, Floreano, a roboticist, and Nosengo, a science writer, bring us tales from the future of intelligent machines—from rescue drones to robot spouses—along with accounts of the cutting-edge research that could make it all possible. These stories from the not-so-distant future show us robots that can be used for mitigating effects of climate change, providing healthcare, working with humans on the factory floor, and more. Floreano and Nosengo tell us how an application of swarm robotics could protect Venice from flooding, how drones could reduce traffic on the congested streets of mega-cities like Hong Kong, and how a “long-term relationship model” robot could supply sex, love, and companionship. After each fictional scenario, they explain the technologies that underlie it, describing advances in such areas as soft robotics, swarm robotics, aerial and mobile robotics, humanoid robots, wearable robots, and even biohybrid robots based on living cells. Robotics technology is no silver bullet for all the world’s problems—but it can help us tackle some of the most pressing challenges we face.

How Intelligent Machines Will Shape Our Future

Tales from a Robotic World

theories, methods, and technologies

Bio-inspired artificial intelligence

Marco Dorigo

Mauro Birattari

Hiroki Sayama

Thomas Stützle

Gianni A. Di Caro

René Doursat

Luca Maria Gambardella

Andries P. Engelbrecht

Roderich Groß

Erol Sahin

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.

7th International Conference, ANTS 2010, Brussels, Belgium,September 8-10, 2010 Proceedings

Swarm Intelligence

Jean-Christophe Zufferey

Mandyam V. Srinivasan

Charlie Ellington

Flying insects are intelligent micromachines capable of exquisite maneuvers in unpredictable environments. Understanding these systems advances our knowledge of flight control, sensor suites, and unsteady aerodynamics, which is of crucial interest to engineers developing intelligent flying robots or micro air vehicles (MAVs). The insights we gain when synthesizing bioinspired systems can in turn benefit the fields of neurophysiology, ethology and zoology by providing real-life tests of the proposed models. This book was written by biologists and engineers leading the research in this crossdisciplinary field. It examines all aspects of the mechanics, technology and intelligence of insects and insectoids. After introductory-level overviews of flight control in insects, dedicated chapters focus on the development of autonomous flying systems using biological principles to sense their surroundings and autonomously navigate. A significant part of the book is dedicated to the mechanics and control of flapping wings both in insects and artificial systems. Finally hybrid locomotion, energy harvesting and manufacturing of small flying robots are covered. A particular feature of the book is the depth on realization topics such as control engineering, electronics, mechanics, optics, robotics and manufacturing. This book will be of interest to academic and industrial researchers engaged with theory and engineering in the domains of aerial robotics, artificial intelligence, and entomology.

Flying Insects and Robots

Kalyanmoy Deb

Owen Holland

Edmund Burke

Wolfgang Banzhaf

Hans-Georg Beyer

Dipankar Dasgupta

Lee Spector

Riccardo Poli

Paul Darwen

James Foster

Mark Harman

Pier Luca Lanzi

Andrea G. B. Tettamanzi

Dirk Thierens

Andy Tyrrell

The two volume set LNCS 3102/3103 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO 2004, held in Seattle, WA, USA, in June 2004. The 230 revised full papers and 104 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 460 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on artificial life, adaptive behavior, agents, and ant colony optimization; artificial immune systems, biological applications; coevolution; evolutionary robotics; evolution strategies and evolutionary programming; evolvable hardware; genetic algorithms; genetic programming; learning classifier systems; real world applications; and search-based software engineering.

Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Seattle, WA, USA, June 26–30, 2004, Proceedings

Genetic and Evolutionary Computation — GECCO 2004

Jean-Daniel Nicoud

Francesco Mondada

No matter what your perspective is, what your goals are, or how experienced you are, Artificial Life research is always a learning experience. The variety of phe nomena that the people who gathered in Lausanne reported and discussed for the fifth time since 1991 at the European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL) has not been programmed, crafted, or assembled by analytic design. It has evolved, emerged, or appeared spontaneously from a process of artificial evolution, se- organisation, or development. Artificial Life is a field where biological and artificial sciences meet and blend together, where the dynamics of biological life are reproduced in the memory of computers, where machines evolve, behave, and communicate like living organ isms, where complex life-like entities are synthesised from electronic chromo somes and artificial chemistries. The impact of Artificial Life in science, phi losophy, and technology is tremendous. Over the years the synthetic approach has established itself as a powerful method for investigating several complex phenomena of life. From a philosophical standpoint, the notion of life and of in telligence is continuously reformulated in relation to the dynamics of the system under observation and to the embedding environment, no longer a privilege of carbon-based entities with brains and eyes. At the same time, the possibility of engineering machines and software with life-like properties such as evolvability, self-repair, and self-maintainance is gradually becoming reality, bringing new perspectives in engineering and applications.

5th European Conference, ECAL'99, Lausanne, Switzerland, September 13-17, 1999 Proceedings

Advances in Artificial Life

Claudio Mattiussi

A comprehensive introduction to new approaches in artificial intelligence and robotics that are inspired by self-organizing biological processes and structures. New approaches to artificial intelligence spring from the idea that intelligence emerges as much from cells, bodies, and societies as it does from evolution, development, and learning. Traditionally, artificial intelligence has been concerned with reproducing the abilities of human brains; newer approaches take inspiration from a wider range of biological structures that that are capable of autonomous self-organization. Examples of these new approaches include evolutionary computation and evolutionary electronics, artificial neural networks, immune systems, biorobotics, and swarm intelligence—to mention only a few. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the emerging field of biologically inspired artificial intelligence that can be used as an upper-level text or as a reference for researchers. Each chapter presents computational approaches inspired by a different biological system; each begins with background information about the biological system and then proceeds to develop computational models that make use of biological concepts. The chapters cover evolutionary computation and electronics; cellular systems; neural systems, including neuromorphic engineering; developmental systems; immune systems; behavioral systems—including several approaches to robotics, including behavior-based, bio-mimetic, epigenetic, and evolutionary robots; and collective systems, including swarm robotics as well as cooperative and competitive co-evolving systems. Chapters end with a concluding overview and suggested reading.

Theories, Methods, and Technologies

Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence

Director Dario Floreano

Stefano Nolfi

An overview of the basic concepts and methodologies of evolutionary robotics, which views robots as autonomous artificial organisms that develop their own skills in close interaction with the environment and without human intervention.

The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-organizing Machines

Evolutionary Robotics

Dario Floreano

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