Applied Soft Computing, Elsevier
Special Issue on Soft Computing Applied to Swarm Robotics

Description:
Swarm robotics is a relatively new paradigm used to control the operation of a multi-robot system, which consists of a large numbers of physically limited robots. In this context, the robots dispose of limited sensing, processing and acting resources. It is now well known that in a robotic swarm executing the right control actions, the desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots of the swarm and their interactions with the environment. This is property, identified as stigmergy, is usually related to swarm intelligence. The control actions, which are nothing but distributed algorithms, run by the robots, are usually simple, and in most cases, the underlying strategy is inspired from the behavior of biological systems such as ants colonies, bird flocks, fish schools and/or social as well as economic systems, among and other existing fields, where the swarming behavior occurs.

This special issue aims to bring together research work in the area of soft computing techniques applied to solve problems in swarm robotics, investigate novel solutions and discuss the future trends in this field. Therefore, the Elsevier Applied Soft Computing Journal seeks original manuscripts on the following main (but not limited) topics for a Special Issue on Soft Computing Applied to Swarm Robotics scheduled to appear in the first semester of 2017.

Topics:
Dynamic task allocation in swarm robotics using soft computing techniques
Clustering in swarm robotics using soft computing techniques
Robot localization in swarm robotics using soft computing techniques
Labor subdivision in swarm robotics using soft computing
Robot recruitment in swarm robotics using soft computing
Pattern formation in swarm robotics using soft computing
Cluster control in swarm robotics using soft computing
Applications of swarm robotics using soft computing
Timeline (tentative):

Paper Submission: 28 February 2016;
Decision Notification: 31 July 2016;
Possible Revision Notification: 30 October 2016
Camera-Ready Submission: 4 December 2017

If you intend to contribute to this special issue, please send a title and abstract of your contribution to the guest editors.

The submissions will be handled through the Electronic Editorial System of Elsevier. Prospective authors are invited to register at http://ees.elsevier.com/asoc/ and submit their papers electronically in a format consistent with the author submission guidelines of Applied Soft Computing. When submitting, please indicate that your manuscript is a Special Issue Paper and select the topic SWARM, when prompted by the system. For questions regarding submissions to the special issue, please contact one of the guest editors. For technical questions regarding the submission website, please contact the support office at Elsevier or the guest editors.

Guest Editors:

Dr. Nadia Nedjah
Department of Electronics Engineering and Telecommunications
State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
E-mail: nadia@eng.uerj.br
Homepage: http://www.eng.uerj.br/~nadia/english.html

Dr. Palmen Angelov
School of Computing and Communications
Lancaster University, United Kingdom
E-mail: p.angelov@lancaster.ac.uk
Homepage: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/angelov

Dr. Oscar Castillo
Research Chair of Graduate Studies
Tijuana Institute Technology, Mexico
E-mail: nader@uci.edu
Homepage: www.hafsamx.org/castillo

Dr. Luiza de Macedo Mourelle
Department of Electronics Engineering and Telecommunications
State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
E-mail: ldmm@eng.uerj.br
Home Page: http://www.eng.uerj.br/~ldmm

Dr. Chao Wang
School of Computer Science,
Univ. of Science and Technology of China – USTC, China
Email: cswang@ustc.edu.cn
Home page: http://staff.ustc.edu.cn/~cswang

Dr. Nader Bagherzadeh
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
University of California, Irvine, California, USA
E-mail: nader@uci.edu
Homepage: http://www.eng.uci.edu/users/nader-bagherzadeh