Call for abstracts and participation

IROS 2014 Workshop on Modular and Swarm Systems - from Nature to Robotics
September 14th, 2014, Chicago, USA

Abstract submission deadline: June 13th, 2014
Notification of acceptance: July 11th, 2014
Camera-ready version: August 11th, 2014

Full details on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/iros2014mss/

Workshop overview
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This full-day workshop creates a forum to review the state of the art of, and discuss future directions and challenges for, the highly interdisciplinary fields of modular robotics and swarm robotics. Modularity is a concept well exploited by natural systems where relatively simple modules form highly complex structures. Through interaction between and continuous replacement or regeneration of these relatively low-cost modules, nature creates systems with a versatility and robustness that so far no artificial system can match. In swarm systems, physically independent entities or modules collaborate to perform common tasks. The fields of modular and swarm robotics have shown to be an ideal playground to study, for instance, self-organization, self-assembly, self-repair, adaptation, collaboration, social interaction, distributed intelligence, smart materials in robotic and natural systems. Over the past years many highly developed robotic systems have been presented. During this workshop we will bring together many of these systems in an exhibition. An active participation of early-career researchers and of those new to IROS is highly encouraged. Experts from a range of disciplines will share their experience and views on the future of these research fields.

Invited speakers
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Nikolaus Correll, University of Colorado at Boulder
Seth Goldstein, University of Colorado at Boulder
Mark Gross, Carnegie Mellon University & Modular Robotics Inc.
David L Hu, Georgia Institute of Technology
Daniela Rus, MIT
Mark Yim, University of Pennsylvania

Submissions
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We invite submissions of 2-4 pages abstracts to our workshop on Modular and Swarm Systems - from Nature to Robotics. Successful abstract submissions will be presented in the form of a poster during the workshop. Abstracts submitted to this workshop will be selected based on their potential for stimulating scientific discussions among workshop participants. We welcome preliminary work of high potential. We especially encourage early-career researchers to send abstract contributions and to participate in the workshop. For the workshop we invited some of the leading experts in modular and swarm robotics as well in related fields from biology and chemistry. This workshop will be your chance to get into contact with these experts, to present your research ideas to them and to get valuable feedback. The abstracts will be published on our workshop website (if agreed by the authors).

Contributions are sought in the following areas:
- modular reconfigurable systems (e.g. robotic, biological, chemical)
- swarm and self-organizing systems (e.g. robotic, biological, chemical)
- self-assembly and self-repair (e.g. robotic, biological, chemical)
- smart materials, programmable matter, amorphous computing
- social systems and mixed animal-robot societies
- distributed evolutionary and collaborative systems

For more instructions on abstract submission see (deadline June 13th): https://sites.google.com/site/iros2014mss/call-for-contributions

Award
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The best poster presentation will be awarded a cash prize (USD 500).

Robot exhibition
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Present your latest modular or swarm robotic system at the workshop! Please send a one-page abstract including a picture of your robotic system and a short description of your demonstration to rico.mockel@maastrichtuniversity.nl (deadline June 13th). A link to a movie showing the demonstration and a link to a general project website are most welcome. For details see here: https://sites.google.com/site/iros2014mss/robot-exhibition

Workshop organizers
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Roderich Gross, The University of Sheffield, UK
Rico Möckel, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Mike Rubenstein, Harvard University, USA
Kasper Stoy, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Contact: rico.mockel@maastrichtuniversity.nl