From Bio-Inspired to Institutional-Inspired Collective Robotics

Abstract

We seek to study and formalise laws that govern collective systems with the aim of synthesising systems of relatively simple robots that display complex behaviour individuals through local interactions. In order to achieve this endeavour, we will study both biological systems and social systems. From biology, we will focus on cell populations. A single cell is relatively simple when compared with a cell population such as a biological creature. While from sociology, we will focus on institutional economics (at the macro level, the agents can be treated as simple entities, no matter how sophisticated they may be at the micro level). Our objective is to bring together theories, ideas and inspiration from institutional economics and cell biology under a common formal framework for large robot populations modelling and analysis.

In recent years, the predominant inspiration for collective robotics modelling analysis and design has been originated from biology. In the case of swarm robotics (SR), inspiration is taken from studies of the self-organizing capabilities displayed by social insects such as ants. Drawing inspiration from these types of natural systems, SR concepts have been applied to swarms of robots with limited sensing and actuation capabilities, performing relatively simple cooperative tasks such as foraging, coverage or odour tracking.

Despite the reasonable success of SR in relatively simple applications, there is no systematic method to design individual behaviours at the micro level, including their interaction actions for the desired collective behaviour to at the macro level to emerge; in fact, the emergent nature of the collective behaviour is a principle that precludes goal- or performance-oriented design. Economics-inspired experiences within multiagent systems suggest that merely emergent processes, and simple local interactions between individuals sometimes lead to inefficient solutions to collective problems.

Economics can provide some insights on how to deal with large collective systems. Institutional Economics (IE) takes institutions – coordination devices deliberately set up by agents or evolved out of interaction – as key elements of any sophisticated society. Notwithstanding the lessons we can learn from IE, its opposition to “naturalistic” approaches can lie in the way to a unified (bio- and institutional-inspired) framework to the analysis and synthesis of collective systems.

Considering other domains in the biological landscape can be of help here. In biology, epigenetics refers to heritable phenotypic variation without genetic variation. An epigenetic approach can provide a new common ground for genetic and non-genetic views on the micro-macro link problem. Our working hypothesis regarding epigenetics is that collective systems have a state space with multiple stationary states, where the actual repertoire of inputs and outputs displayed by each agent (cell or robotic system) in a given instant, as well as the way in which these are wired within the agent (gene regulatory network in cells, and software/hardware in robotic systems), can be different even in similar or identical environments. On the basis of this hypothesis, new methods for controlling collectives, both at micro and macro levels, can be developed.

By the end of this project, we will aim at providing novel cooperation and coordination algorithms and methods for collective robotics based on a formal framework for collective systems. More specifically, we will import concepts from Biology and Economy and develop probabilistic mathematical models of the robot population dynamics under the different approaches (bio- and institutionally-inspired, and merged). This will allow us to gain further insight on their differences and similarities, relative merits, and adequateness for particular classes of systems, by predicting their performance in non-tested scenarios. Furthermore, though the project focus is on bringing multidisciplinary inspiration to design better robot collectives, we expect to provide further insight on cell biology and institutional economics mathematical modeling as a side effect.

Resumo / Robótica Colectiva: Da Inspiração Biológica à Inspiração Institucionalista

News and Events

Project meetings

• Year 1 - 14-Jun-2010
• Year 1 - 13-Oct-2010
• Year 1 - 10-Feb-2011
• Year 1 - 13-Oct-2011
• Year 2 - 12-Jan-2012
• Year 2 - 29-May-2012
• Year 2 - 14-Jun-2012
• Year 3 -17-Apr-2013

Partners

• Instituto Superior Técnico / Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (IST/ISR - leader)
• Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC/FCG)

People

• IST/ISR:
  • Pedro Manuel Urbano de Almeida Lima
  • Anders Lyhne Christensen
  • Porfírio Simões de Carvalho e Silva
  • Rodrigo Martins de Matos Ventura
  • José Nuno Ferreira Maia Pereira

• IGC/FCG:
  • Claudine Chaouiya Chantegrel
  • Jorge Albino Cadeias Araujo Carneiro
  • Luis Rocha
  • Thiago dos Santos Guzella

Reports

• Task 1
• Task 2
• Task 3
• Tasks 4-6

Media

Roundabout case study (from Institutional Robotics). Basic behaviours: obstacles avoidance, wall following.

Wireless connected swarm with 40 e-puck robots, using Institutional Agent Controllers.

Publications

Books

• P. Silva, Das Sociedades Humanas às Sociedades Artificiais, Lisboa, Âncora, 2011

Theses

• Pereira, J. N. (2013). Advancing Social Interactions Among Robots: an Institutional Economics-based Approach to Distributed Robotics Systems. PhD thesis, IST-EPFL Joint Doctoral Initiative - Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), E ́cole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) - to be delivered soon.

International Journals

• José N. Pereira, Porfírio Silva, Pedro Lima, Alcherio Martinoli, "Formalization, Implementation, and Modeling of Institutional Controllers for Distributed Robotic Systems", Artificial Life, 20(1), 2013, in press PDF

• J. Gomes, P. Urbano, and A. L. Christensen (2013), "Evolution of Swarm Robotics Systems with Novelty Search", Swarm Intelligence, in press PDF

National Journals (in Portuguese)

• P. Silva, Dar tempo ao tempo. O estudo do comportamento nas ciências do artificial e o problema das escalas temporais, Antropologia Portuguesa, 26-27, pp. 181-208 PDF

• P. Silva, O Elo Perdido das Ciências do Artificial (ou Da Economia como uma das Ciências do Artificial), Revista da Faculdade de Letras do Porto – Filosofia, II Série, Volume XXV/XXVI, pp. 149-162 (2010) PDF

• P. Silva, J. Bustamante, Sociedades Humanas, Sociedades Artificiais: Perspectivas da Convergência, Trajectos, 16, (Primavera 2010), pp. 7-18 PDF

• P. Silva, P. Lima, Instituição, Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, 40, pp. 97-107 (2009) PDF

International Conferences

• D.Tarapore, Christensen, A. L., Lima, P. U., and Carneiro, J. (2013). Abnormality detection in multiagent systems inspired by the adaptive immune system. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS XII, pages 23?30. IFAAMAS. PDF

• D.Tarapore, Christensen, A. L., Lima, P. U., and Carneiro, J. (2012). Clonal expansion without self-replicating entities. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems, ICARIS XI, pages 191?204. Springer, Berlin, Germany. PDF

• N. Mathews, A. L. Christensen, R. O'Grady and M. Dorigo (2012), "Spatially Targeted Communication and Self-Assembly in a Heterogeneous Swarm of Robots", Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, pages 2551-2552 PDF

• M. Duarte, S. Oliveira, and A. L. Christensen (2012), "Automatic synthesis of controllers for real robots based on preprogrammed behaviors", Proceedings of the International Conference on Adaptive Behavior (SAB), Springer, Berlin, Germany, pages 249-257. PDF

• M. Duarte, S. Oliveira, and A. L. Christensen (2012), "Structured Composition of Evolved Robotic Controllers", Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems, N. Siebel, Berlin, Germany, pages 19--25, ISSN 2190-5576 (print), ISSN 2190-5746 (online) PDF

• R. O'Grady, A. L. Christensen, R. Gross, and M. Dorigo (2012), "Self-organised Computational Structures for Real Time Analysis in Highly Distributed Environmental Monitoring", Proceedings of the IROS-2012 Workshop on Robotics for Environmental Monitoring. PDF

• Danesh Tarapore, A. Christensen, Pedro Lima, J. Carneiro, "Environment classification in multiagent systems inspired by the adaptive immune system", Proc. of Artificial Life XIII - 13th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems, Michigan, USA, 2012 PDF

• José N. Pereira, P. Silva, P. Lima, A. Martinoli, “Formalizing Institutions as Executable Petri Nets for Distributed Robotic Systems”, Proceedings of the European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL-2011), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 646-653 – invited for publication in the Artificial Life journal as one of the conference’s Best Papers PDF

• S. Oliveira, L. Nunes, A. L. Christensen, (2011), "An Experiment in Mixing Evolving and Preprogrammed Robots". Proceedings of the European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL-2011), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 605-612 PDF

• N. Mathews, A. L. Christensen, R. O'Grady, P. Rétornaz, M. Bonani, F. Mondada, M. Dorigo (2011), "Enhanced Directional Self-Assembly based on Active Recruitment and Guidance", Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, pages 4762-4769 PDF

• José N. Pereira, A. L. Christensen, Porfírio Silva, Pedro Lima, "Coordination Through Institutional Roles in Robot Collectives", Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2010), IFAAMAS, Toronto, Canada, 2010, pages 1507-1508 PDF

• N. Mathews, A. L. Christensen, R. O'Grady, and M. Dorigo, "Cooperation in a Heterogeneous Robot Swarm through Spatially Targeted Communication". Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2010), Springer Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 2010, pages 400-407. PDF

• C. Pinciroli, R. O'Grady, A. L. Christensen, M. Dorigo, "Controlling Heterogeneous Swarms Through Minimal Communication Between Homogeneous Sub-Swarms" The Seventh International Conference on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence (ANTS-2010), Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2010, pages 558-559. FALTA

Links

• Institutional Robotics
• Intelligent Robots and Systems group at IST/ISR
• Quantitative Organism Biology at IGC

Reference Information

• Project Reference: PTDC/EEA-CRO/104658/2008
• Start: February 2010
• End: January 2013
• Total budget: 100.000,00 EUR
• Principal Investigator: Pedro U. Lima

Bibliography

• Modeling Dynamics of Cell Population Molecule Expression Distribution, D. Milutinovic, J. Carneiro, Michael Athans, Pedro Lima, Journal of on-Linear Analysis: Hybrid Systems and Applications, Elsevier, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 81-94, 2007
• Milutinovic, D., & Lima, P. (2006). Modeling and Optimal Centralized Control of a Large-Size Robotic Population. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 22(6), 1280–1285
• Carneiro J, Leon K, Caramalho I, van den Dool C, Gardner R, Oliveira V, Bergman ML, Sepúlveda N, Paixão T, Faro J, Demengeot J. (2007) When three is not a crowd: a Crossregulation model of the dynamics and repertoire selection of regulatory CD4+ T cells. Immunol Rev. 216:48-68
• A. L. Christensen, R. O ́Grady, and M. Dorigo (2009), "From Fireflies to Fault Tolerant Swarms of Robots", IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, In press.
• Silva, P. and Lima, P.U.,Institutional Robotics, Advances in Artificial Life. Proceedings of the 9th European Conference, ECAL 2007, Springer-Verlag, pp. 595-604