Alternative energy UAVs

There are various UAVs around that are powered with alternative means, including solar. This one from ONR is interesting, powered by a fuel cell.

I suspect that as UAVs take on a wider range of forms and as they are used for more different missions than current manned aerial vehicles, we'll see more creative ways to use alternative energy.

EuroHawk

European version of the GlobalHawk

http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2009/10/eurohawk-uav-finally-goes-global.html

ChemBot

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10375216-1.html

Now this is a fun robot.

Deployed USV

Israel's unmanned "boat"

The Israeli navy will shortly begin deploying unmanned craft along the Mediterranean coast, particularly off the Hamas-held Gaza Strip in the south and Lebanon in the north where Hezbollah guerrillas operate.

This vehicle is fully remote controlled from shore, but would provide an interesting platform for future MRS.

Robot hops over wall

A fun video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8253721.stm

[T]he Precision Urban Hopper can use a piston-actuated "leg" to launch it over obstacles such as walls or fences.

Building motivation into AI

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23354/page1/

Not a terribly convincing argument:

Indeed, a really advanced intelligence, improperly motivated, might realize the impermanence of all things, calculate that the sun will burn out in a few billion years, and decide to play video games for the remainder of its existence, concluding that inventing an even smarter machine is pointless.

Pakistan's UAVs

http://blog.taragana.com/n/paf-using-unmanned-drones-in-war-exercise-160619/

“PAF is employing for the first time in the recent drills pilotless UAV drone planes to target the enemies. It was due to the precision of PAF planning that common people were not among the casualties,” Air Vice Marshal Hasan said

Tube launched UAVs might be only 2 years off

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/08/airforce_tube_UAV_083009w/

The Tube Launched Expendable UAV is no more than 3 feet long, weighs only 15 pounds, can fly for an hour and gives either a pilot or a ground unit the option to see over that next ridge without attracting much attention, according to a fact sheet provided by L3 Geneva Aerospace. The Air Force refused to talk about the aircraft.

The UAV would be fired off the wing or out the back hatch, he said. After the launch from a manned aircraft, a payload operator inside the plane would fly the UAV.

[L3 Flight Tech Manager] Cahill said he expected an aircraft to carry more than one UAV to give aircrews and ground commanders the additional flexibility to follow multiple targets. A tracker card installed inside the UAV will also make it easier for operators to track moving vehicles, Cahill said.

IROS Program out

https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/rtf/IROS09_ProgramAtAGlanceWeb.html

Papers in multi-robot or distributed robotics sessions:

MoIVT12

Mills 6
Distributed Robotics: Traffic Control and Exploration Regular Sessions

Chair: Chaimowicz, Luiz Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais
Co-Chair: de Almeida, Anibal Univ. of Coimbra

16:00-16:20, Paper MoIVT12.1


Multi-Robot Exploration and Fire Searching
Marjovi, Ali Univ. of Coimbra
Nunes, João Gonçalo Inst. of Systems and Robotics (ISR) - Univ. of Coimbra
Marques, Lino Univ. of Coimbra
de Almeida, Anibal Univ. of Coimbra

16:20-16:40, Paper MoIVT12.2


Predictive Constrained Gain Scheduling for UGV Path Tracking in a Networked Control System
Klingenberg, Bryan North Carolina State Univ.
Ojha, Unnati North Carolina State Univ.
Chow, Mo-Yuen North Carolina State Univ.

16:40-17:00, Paper MoIVT12.3


Cluster Space Collision Avoidance for Mobile Two-Robot Systems
Kitts, Christopher Santa Clara Univ.
Stanhouse, Kyle Santa Clara Univ.
Chindaphorn, Piya Santa Clara Univ.

17:00-17:20, Paper MoIVT12.4


Traffic Control for a Swarm of Robots: Avoiding Group Conflicts
Marcolino, Leandro Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais
Chaimowicz, Luiz Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais

17:20-17:40, Paper MoIVT12.5


Traffic Control for a Swarm of Robots: Avoiding Target Congestion
Marcolino, Leandro Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais
Chaimowicz, Luiz



WeIVT12

Mills 6
Distrubuted Robotics: Sensing Regular Sessions

Co-Chair: Carpin, Stefano Univ. of California, Merced

16:00-16:20, Paper WeIVT12.1


Image-Based Mapping and Navigation with Heterogeneous Robots
Erinc, Gorkem Univ. of California Merced
Carpin, Stefano Univ. of California, Merced

16:20-16:40, Paper WeIVT12.2


Prioritized Sensor Detection Via Dynamic Voronoi-Based Navigation
Cortez, Andres Univ. of New Mexico
Fierro, Rafael Univ. of New Mexico
Wood, John Univ. of New Mexico

16:40-17:00, Paper WeIVT12.3


Surveillance Strategies for Target Detection with Sweep Lines
Kolling, Andreas Univ. of California Merced
Carpin, Stefano Univ. of California, Merced

17:00-17:20, Paper WeIVT12.4


A Unified Methodology for Multi-Robot Passive & Active Sensing
Kosmatopoulos, Elias Tech. Univ. of Crete
Doitsidis, Lefteris Tech. Univ. of Crete
Aboudolas, Konstantinos Tech. Univ. of Crete

17:20-17:40, Paper WeIVT12.5


Collective Transport of Robots: Coherent, Minimalist Multi-Robot Leader-Following
Gupta, Megha Univ. of Southern California
Das, Jnaneshwar Univ. of Southern California
Vieira, Marcos Univ. of Southern California
Heidarsson, Hordur Kristinn Univ. of Southern California
Vathsangam, Harshvardhan Univ. of Southern California
Sukhatme, Gaurav

WeIVT13

Mills 7
Multi-Robot Cooperation Regular Sessions

Chair: Clark, C. M. California Pol. State Univ.

16:00-16:20, Paper WeIVT13.1


Multi-Robot Team Coordination through Roles, Positionings and Coordinated Procedures
Lau, Nuno Aveiro Univ.
Seabra Lopes, Luís Univ. de Aveiro
Corrente, Gustavo Univ. de Aveiro
Filipe, Nelson Univ. de Aveiro

16:20-16:40, Paper WeIVT13.2


Altruistic Task Allocation Despite Unbalanced Relationships within Multi-Robot Communities
Morton, Ryan Cal Pol. - San Luis Obispo
Bekey, George Univ. of Southern California
Clark, C. M. California Pol. State Univ.

16:40-17:00, Paper WeIVT13.3


Entrapment/Escorting and Patrolling Missions in Multi-Robot Cluster Space Control
Mas, Ignacio Santa Clara Univ.
Li, Steven Santa Clara Univ.
Acain, Jose Santa Clara Univ.
Kitts, Christopher Santa Clara Univ.

17:00-17:20, Paper WeIVT13.4


Effective Robot Team Control Methodologies for Battlefield Applications
Fields, MaryAnne Army Res. Lab.
Ellen, Haas Army Res. Lab.
Hill, Susan Us Army Res. Lab.
Stachowiak, Chris Army Res. Lab.
Barnes, Laura Univ. of Texas at Arlington

17:20-17:40, Paper WeIVT13.5


Negotiation of Target Points for Teams of Heterogeneous Robots: An Application to Exploration
Rossi, Claudio Univ. Pol. de Madrid
Aldama, Leyre Univ. Pol. de Madrid
Barrientos, Antonio UPM
Valero, Alberto Univ. Pol. de Madrid
Sánchez, Carlos Univ. Pol. de Madrid


MoIIIT10

Mills 4
Multi-Robot Systems Communication Regular Sessions

Chair: Vaughan, Richard Simon Fraser Univ.
Co-Chair: Goldberg, Ken UC Berkeley

14:00-14:20, Paper MoIIIT10.1


Coordinating Recharging of Large Scale Robotic Teams
Drenner, Andrew UMN
Janssen, Michael Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Papanikolopoulos, Nikos Univ. of Minnesota

14:20-14:40, Paper MoIIIT10.2


Adaptive Mobile Charging Stations for Multi-Robot Systems
Couture-Beil, Alex Simon Fraser Univ.
Vaughan, Richard Simon Fraser Univ.

14:40-15:00, Paper MoIIIT10.3


Nonparametric Belief Propagation for Distributed Tracking of Robot Networks with Noisy Inter-Distance Measurements
Schiff, Jeremy UC Berkeley
Sudderth, Erik Univ. of California, Berkeley
Goldberg, Ken UC Berkeley

15:00-15:20, Paper MoIIIT10.4


An Adaptive Mobile Robots Tethering Algorithm in Constrained Environments
Chen, Xi Michigan Tech. Univ.
Tan, Jindong Michigan Tech. Univ.

15:20-15:40, Paper MoIIIT10.5


TENTACLES: Self-Configuring Robotic Radio Networks in Unknown Environments
Chiu, Chi Ho Univ. of Southern California
Salemi, Behnam USC/ISI
Rubenstein, Michael Univ. of southern california
Shen, Wei-Min USC Information Science Inst.
Zhu, Hua ArgonST
Maheswaran, Rajiv Univ. of Southern California - Information Sciences Inst.
Szekely, Pedro Univ. of Southern California
Rogers, Craig


WeIT13

Mills 7
Multi-Robot Interaction and Control Regular Sessions


09:10-09:30, Paper WeIT13.1


Stable and Spontaneous Self-Assembly of a Multi-Robotic System by Exploiting Physical Interaction between Agents
Suzuki, Kazuya Tohoku Univ.
Tsukidate, Tsunamichi Tohoku Univ.
Shimizu, Masahiro Tohoku Univ.
Ishiguro, Akio Tohoku Univ.

09:30-09:50, Paper WeIT13.2


Segregation in Swarms of Mobile Robots Based on the Brazil Nut Effect
Groß, Roderich EPFL
Magnenat, Stéphane EPFL
Mondada, Francesco EPFL

09:50-10:10, Paper WeIT13.3


Self-Configuring Robot Swarms with Dual Rotating Infrared Sensors
Lee, Geunho Japan Advanced Inst. of Sci. & Tech.
Yoon, Seokhoon Japan Advanced Inst. of Science and Tech.
Chong, Nak Young Japan Advanced Inst. of Sci. and Tech.
Christensen, Henrik Iskov Georgia Inst. of Tech.

10:10-10:30, Paper WeIT13.4


Multiplicative Potential Energy Function for Swarm Control
Hou, Saing Paul Nanyang Tech. Univ.
Cheah, C. C. Nanyang Tech. Univ.

WeIIT13

Mills 7
Multi-Robot Formation Control Regular Sessions

Co-Chair: Sheng, Weihua Oklahoma State Univ.

10:50-11:10, Paper WeIIT13.1


Leader-Following Formation Control Based on Pursuit Strategies
ding, wei Zhejiang Univ.
yan, gangfeng Zhejiang Univ.
Lin, Zhiyun Zhejiang Univ.
Lan, Ying Zhejiang Univ.

11:10-11:30, Paper WeIIT13.2


Discrete Event Systems Based Formation Control Framework to Coordinate Multiple Nonholonomic Mobile Robots
Gamage, Gayan Memorial Univ. of Newfoundland
Mann, George K. I. Memorial Univ. of Newfoundland
Gosine, Raymond G. Memorial Univ. of Newfoundland

11:30-11:50, Paper WeIIT13.3


Decision-Theoretic Robot Guidance for Active Cooperative Perception
Pahliani, Abdolkarim Inst. Superior Técnico - Inst. for Systems and Robotics
Spaan, Matthijs Inst. Superior Técnico - Inst. for Systems and Robotics
Lima, Pedro Inst. Superior Técnico - Inst. for Systems and Robotics

11:50-12:10, Paper WeIIT13.4


Adaptive Flocking Control for Dynamic Target Tracking in Mobile Sensor Networks
La, Hung Oklahoma State Univ.
Sheng, Weihua Oklahoma State Univ.

12:10-12:30, Paper WeIIT13.5


Characterization and Modeling of Wireless Channels for Networked Robotic and Control Systems -- a Comprehensive Overview
Mostofi, Yasamin Univ. of New Mexico
Gonzalez-Ruiz, Alejandro UNM
Ghaffarkhah, Alireza Univ. of New Mexico
Li, Ding


WeIIT12

Mills 6
Distributed Robotics: Formation and Task Allocation Regular Sessions

Co-Chair: Weinberg, Jerry Southern Illinois Univ. Edwardsville

10:50-11:10, Paper WeIIT12.1


A Distributed Boundary Detection Algorithm for Multi-Robot Systems
McLurkin, James Rice Univ.
Demaine, Erik MIT

11:10-11:30, Paper WeIIT12.2


Dynamic Coalition Formation under Uncertainty
Hooper, Daylond Air Force Inst. of Tech.
Peterson, Gilbert Air Force Inst. of Tech.
Borghetti, Brett Air Force Inst. of Tech.

11:30-11:50, Paper WeIIT12.3


Fault-Tolerant Formations of Mobile Robots
Mead, Ross Univ. of Southern California
Long, Robert Southern Illinois Univ. at Edwardsville
Weinberg, Jerry Southern Illinois Univ. Edwardsville

11:50-12:10, Paper WeIIT12.4


Negotiation with Reaction Functions for Solving Complex Task Allocation Problems
Zheng, Xiaoming Univ. of Southern California
Koenig, Sven Univ. of Southern California

12:10-12:30, Paper WeIIT12.5


CoMutaR: A Framework for Multi-Robot Coordination and Task Allocation
Shiroma, Pedro Univ. Federal de Minas Gerais
Campos, Mario F. Montenegro Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais


WeIVT13

Mills 7
Multi-Robot Cooperation Regular Sessions

Chair: Clark, C. M. California Pol. State Univ.

16:00-16:20, Paper WeIVT13.1


Multi-Robot Team Coordination through Roles, Positionings and Coordinated Procedures
Lau, Nuno Aveiro Univ.
Seabra Lopes, Luís Univ. de Aveiro
Corrente, Gustavo Univ. de Aveiro
Filipe, Nelson Univ. de Aveiro

16:20-16:40, Paper WeIVT13.2


Altruistic Task Allocation Despite Unbalanced Relationships within Multi-Robot Communities
Morton, Ryan Cal Pol. - San Luis Obispo
Bekey, George Univ. of Southern California
Clark, C. M. California Pol. State Univ.

16:40-17:00, Paper WeIVT13.3


Entrapment/Escorting and Patrolling Missions in Multi-Robot Cluster Space Control
Mas, Ignacio Santa Clara Univ.
Li, Steven Santa Clara Univ.
Acain, Jose Santa Clara Univ.
Kitts, Christopher Santa Clara Univ.

17:00-17:20, Paper WeIVT13.4


Effective Robot Team Control Methodologies for Battlefield Applications
Fields, MaryAnne Army Res. Lab.
Ellen, Haas Army Res. Lab.
Hill, Susan Us Army Res. Lab.
Stachowiak, Chris Army Res. Lab.
Barnes, Laura Univ. of Texas at Arlington

17:20-17:40, Paper WeIVT13.5


Negotiation of Target Points for Teams of Heterogeneous Robots: An Application to Exploration
Rossi, Claudio Univ. Pol. de Madrid
Aldama, Leyre Univ. Pol. de Madrid
Barrientos, Antonio UPM
Valero, Alberto Univ. Pol. de Madrid
Sánchez, Carlos

WeIVT15

Sterling 6
Path Planning: Multiple Mobile Robots Regular Sessions

Chair: Wang, Zhidong Chiba Inst. of Tech.
Co-Chair: Xiao, Jizhong City Coll. of New York

16:00-16:20, Paper WeIVT15.1


The Null-Space Based Behavioral Control for a Team of Cooperative Mobile Robots with Actuator Saturations
Arrichiello, Filippo Univ. di Cassino
Chiaverini, Stefano Univ. di Cassino
Indiveri, Giovanni Univ. of Salento
Pedone, Paola Univ. del Salento

16:20-16:40, Paper WeIVT15.2


Independent Navigation of Multiple Mobile Robots with Hybrid Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles
Snape, Jamie Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
van den Berg, Jur Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Guy, Stephen J. Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Manocha, Dinesh UNC at Chapel Hill

16:40-17:00, Paper WeIVT15.3


A Path Planning Method for Dynamic Object Closure by Using Random Caging Formation Testing
Wang, Zhidong Chiba Inst. of Tech.
Matsumoto, Hidenori Chiba Inst. of Tech.
Hirata, Yasuhisa Tohoku Univ.
Kosuge, Kazuhiro Tohoku Univ.

17:00-17:20, Paper WeIVT15.4


A Dynamic Path Planning Approach for Multi-Robot Sensor-Based Coverage Considering Energy Constraints
YAZICI, Ahmet Eskisehir Osmangazi Univ.
Kirlik, Gokhan Eskisehir Osmangazi Univ.
PARLAKTUNA, Osman OSMANGAZI Univ.
Sipahioglu, Aydin Eskisehir Osmangazi Univ.

17:20-17:40, Paper WeIVT15.5


Solvability of Multi Robot Motion Planning Problems on Trees
Masehian, Ellips Tarbiat Modares Univ.
Hassan Nejad, Azadeh

International Journal of Robotics Research Online

Only one multirobot paper in the current IJJR. Except it isn't a multirobot paper, its about robot controlled in a multirobot way.

Distributed Kinematic Motion Control of Multi-Robot Coordination Subject
to Physical Constraints
Youngshik Kim and Mark Minor

http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0278364909343217v1

This paper presents a kinematic motion control strategy for an n-axle Compliant Framed Modular wheeled Mobile Robot (CFMMR). This robot is essentially a passive-joint active-wheel snake robot where coordinated motion of the robot modules is critical for maximizing mobility and minimizing traction forces. A distributed master–slave kinematic motion control structure is proposed where the front axle module of the robot is the master and subsequent axle modules are slaves. An existing path manifold based controller is used to guide the motion of the master. Two steering algorithms with different specializations are then proposed for the slave modules. Performance of the steering algorithms is characterized based upon their capability to reduce traction forces, control final robot posture, and maneuver in a limited space. It is shown that these algorithms satisfy the physical constraints of the robot, which are characterized by path curvature and velocity limitations. Simulation and experimental results validate and characterize the performance of the algorithms.

Company using Multirobot Systems

http://www.kivasystems.com/

In Distribution centers, warehouses and manufacturing plants equipped with the Kiva MFS, operators stand still while the products come to them. Pallets, cases, and orders are stored on inventory pods that are picked up and moved by a fleet of mobile robotic drive units. As a result, any product can go to any operator at any time to fill any order.

These robots are pretty simple and the environment is pretty constrained but that is how it should be for robots in industrial environments. This is a good, smart use of a MRS.

Goldman Sach's MAS - Infrastructure Upgrade

The NYSE is building a new data center which will apparently allow more trading by multia-gent systems.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/nyse-builds-computer-trading-mothership-worries-abound.ars

It's quite remarkable to me that many of the econ and finance folks who insist that "HFT is the same thing we always did, just way faster" don't seem to realize that frequency and amplitude matter a whole lot, and that for any given phenomenon when you suddenly increase those two factors by an order of magnitude you typically end up with something very different than what you started with. This is true for isolated phenomena, and it's doubly true for complex systems, where you have to deal with systemic effects like feedback loops and synchronization/resonance.

Big European UAV

The Euro Hawk(r) is a derivative of the Block 20 Global Hawk, and will be equipped with a new SIGINT mission system developed by EADS Defence & Security (DS). The SIGINT system provides standoff capability to detect electronic intelligence radar and communications intelligence emitters. EADS DS will also provide the ground stations that will receive and analyze the data from Euro Hawk(r) as part of an integrated system solution.

UAVs not very successful?

I am not exactly sure how anyone comes up with these numbers, because it is often hard to tell whether someone is an insurgent, even after they are captured .....

The foreign policy community’s favorite counterinsurgency adviser, or at least their favorite Australian one, David Kilcullen, told lawmakers last week that the drone strikes targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Pakistan are creating enemies at a far faster rate than its killing them. According to statistics he provided, the success rate of the drone bombing campaign is extremely low: just 2 percent of bombs dropped have hit targeted militants. The other 98 percent? Those killed noncombatant Pakistani civilians, he said.

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/05/11/drones-hardly-ever-kill-bad-guys/

AAMAS '10 CFP

Call for Papers-AAMAS 2010
The 9th International Conference on Agents and Multi Agent Systems
Toronto, Canada

Important dates:
Conference: May 10 - 14, 2010
Electronic Abstract Submission: October 8, 2009
Full Paper Submission: October 13, 2009
Author Notification: December 18, 2009

Collocated with KR, NMR, ICAPS, FOIS, (all in Toronto) and DL 2010 (in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)
Expanded and latest information: www.cse.yorku.ca/AAMAS2010/

INTRODUCTION

AAMAS is the leading scientific conference for research in autonomous
agents and multiagent systems. The AAMAS conference series was
initiated in 2002 by merging three highly-respected meetings: International
Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS); International Workshop on
Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL); and International
Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA). The aim of the joint conference
is to provide a single, high-profile, internationally-respected
archival forum for scientific research in the theory and practice of
autonomous agents and multiagent systems. AAMAS-2010 is the Ninth
conference in the AAMAS series, following enormously successful
previous conferences, and will be held at the Sheraton Centre Toronto
Hotel in downtown Toronto. See www.ifaamas.org for more
information on the AAMAS conference series.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

AAMAS-2010 seeks high-quality submissions of full papers, limited to 8
pages in length. Submissions will be rigorously peer reviewed and
evaluated on the basis of originality, soundness, significance,
presentation, understanding of the state of the art, and overall
quality of their technical contribution. Reviews will be double blind;
authors must avoid including anything that can be used to identify
them. Where submission is for full (8 page) papers only, in some
cases they may be accepted as 2 page extended abstracts. For formatting
instructions, please refer to the conference page.

In addition to submissions in the main track, AAMAS is soliciting
papers in two special tracks on robotics, and on virtual agents (see
below). The review process for the special tracks will be the same as
for the main track, but with specially-selected program committee
members.

Special Track on Robotics (Chair: Michael Beetz):
Papers on theory and applications concerning single and multiple
robots will be welcome, namely those focusing on real robots
interacting with their surrounding environments. The goal is to foster
interaction between researchers on agent and robotics systems, so as
to provide a cradle for cross-fertilization of concepts from both
fields.

Special Track on Virtual Agents (Chair: Stacy Marsella):
Virtual agents are embodied agents in interactive virtual or physical
environments that emulate human-like behavior. We encourage papers on
the design, implementation, and evaluation of virtual agents as well
as challenging applications featuring them. The goal is to provide an
opportunity for interaction and cross-fertilization between the AAMAS
community and researchers working on virtual agents and to strengthen
links between the two communities.

In addition to the conference papers, presented in parallel
technical sessions, AAMAS-2010 will include:
o Industry and Applications track
o Demonstrations
o Posters presentations for full papers and extended abstracts
o Invited talks and panel discussions

The submission processes for the demonstration and industry tracks are
separate from the main paper submission process.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

General Chairs: Michael Luck and Sandip Sen
Program Chairs: Wiebe van der Hoek and Gal A. Kaminka
Local Organization Chair: Yves Lesperance

A list of the other members of the AAMAS-2010 Organizing Committee may
be found at www.cse.yorku.ca/AAMAS2010/

Robot brains or robot bodies?

A few weeks ago, I had a post about roboticists taking advantage of an insect body for its mechanical capabilities and giving it a brain. Now this picture in the Guardian of a roboticist using an insect brain to control a robotic body. Maybe these researchers could get together and either make robots or some cool hybrid insects!

RoboCup Rescue robots

Some interesting robot designs from 2009 RoboCup Rescue League. It feels like roboticists are starting to really understand that robot designs don't need to look like traditional vehicle designs. Many more pictures, courtesy of Amir Soltanzadeh, here.

Goldman Sach's MAS

There is a theory among, presumably bitter, AI researchers that a technology is called AI until it works and then it gets called something else. Voice recognition, OCR, face recognition in digital cameras are examples of this. Goldman Sach's intelligent, distributed trading platform seems to be continuing the tradition for MAS. From what I can glean from the various newspaper articles, they have a bunch of agents that monitor trading flows and autonomously and very quickly place trades to exploit market conditions.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/04/taibbi-nyse-ends-transparency-to-protect-goldman-sachs/

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/guest-post-manipulation.html

I think people overlook how MAS and MRS can process so much information, collected from a very large number of sources and make so many decisions so quickly. Humans simply can't compete. The above stories hint that this might be the case here. Assuming what Goldman is doing is legal (I have no idea), then their advantage is due to a reasonably simple MAS that can simply process more information and make more decisions faster than any human can.

I suspect that we will have to get used to this type of thing happening. It won't be just in markets, it may be in many different areas.

VTOL UAV

Here is a fun little UAV made by MLB Co. and expected to be available for about $50K within a year. I think we'll see more radical designs like this as UAV technology matures and designers understand the implications of not needing to deal with limitations of a human on board.



And for the price, I think we will see a lot of vehicles like this in use, very soon.

UCAS "Video"

Very artistic (and no doubt expensive) visualization of how UCAS might fit into next generation warfare. The video is a couple of years old, completely focused on missions and scenarios that don't feel relevant any more, but no doubt big contractors are still doing their best to sell it.

UAV Sniper

The Army is testing an autonomous helicopter capable of acting as a sniper. Not much information about the stability package for the weapon, but it must be impressive. Not sure how a helicopter is going to achieve the stealth required of a sniper? After the much publicized messes the Predators have made with their much less precise weapons, this is a good step forward.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/04/army-tests-new/

Insects for chemical and biological detection

Controlling small UAVs has turned out to be so difficult (even understanding the way insects fly was/is really hard) that DARPA is again looking to outfitting insects instead of building vehicles.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-06/insect-wifi-network-tracks-down-wmds

I think it was in the movie Get Smart that Max smashed an expensive prototype something like this into pieces.

Nuclear armed UAVs?

Two interesting UAV articles posted on the same day. One talks about the possibility of nuclear armed UAVs, the other notes that the USAF will train more UAV pilots than real pilots for the first time this year. This is partly in response to Gates insisting that the Air Force goes to more automation in their UAVs in response to higher crash rates than the Army had for their UAVs.

Together, these two articles show just how quickly the U.S. military is moving to UAVs. The F-22 and Stealth Bombers and Fighters might be the last major manned military aircraft. End of an era.

http://eideard.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/air-force-intends-to-rely-on-unmanned-aircraft-rather-than-pilots/

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/06/4040349

Solar powered robots?

The reigning North American Solar Challenge car made it from Texas to Canada in 50 hours. This is with a driver, adding weight and imposing constraints on the overall shape. Without those constraints, it would seem reasonable to think that a solar powered robot vehicle could move pretty effectively, reliably and quickly over long distances. I don't recall seeing any solar powered robotic vehicles (except on Mars), I wonder why.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/06/0-to-60-in-full-sunlight-revving-up-for-world-solar-challenge.ars

Spy Chips Guiding CIA Drone Strikes

Story in Wired about the possibility that the U.S. military is getting locals to plant RF chips on or near militants which are used to guide UAVs in onto their targets.

One of the interesting things to me was that apparently the militants had worked out a while ago that this was going on and were doing their best to stop it. That seems to indicate a pretty high level of technical sophistication.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/spy-chips-guiding-cia-drone-strikes-locals-say/

In a review of "Wired for War"

"Another scientist talked about how the military came to him and said, "Oh, we'd like you to design the hunter-killer drone from the Terminator movies." Which, you know, is kind of incredibly scary, but it makes perfect sense from another perspective in that if it's effective for SkyNet, their thinking is: "Well, it could be really neat in our real-world battlefields.""

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/robotics/wired-war-or-how-we-learned-stop-worrying-and-let-dystopian-sf-movies-inspire-our-

DARPA Strategic Plan

Four "Future Icons" in DARPA's strategic plan will require particular involvement of MAS and MRS researchers:

Air Vehicles: unmanned air vehicles that quickly arrive at their mission station and can loiter there for very long periods

National Cyber Range: The National Cyber Range will provide an environment for realistic, qualitative and quantitative assessment of potentially revolutionary cyber research and development technologies

Persistent Surveillance Sensors: determine, track, and neutralize elusive threats, such as improvised explosive device factories

Networks: self-forming, robust, self-defending networks at the strategic and tactical level are the key to network-centric warfare; these networks will use spectrum far more efficiently and resist disruption if the GPS time signal is unavailable


DARPA currently emphasizes research in nine strategic thrusts:
Robust, Secure, Self-Forming Networks
Detection, Precision ID, Tracking, and Destruction of Elusive Targets
Urban Area Operations
Advanced Manned and Unmanned Systems
Detection, Characterization, and Assessment of Underground Structures
Space
Increasing the Tooth to Tail Ratio
Bio-Revolution
Core Technologies

http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/StratPlan09.pdf

Richard Feyman at Thinking Machines

Great article about Richard Feyman's time at Thinking Machines. This guy was a pure scientist.

"That is positively the dopiest idea I ever heard." For Richard a crazy idea was an opportunity to either prove it wrong or prove it right. Either way, he was interested. By the end of lunch he had agreed to spend the summer working at the company."

".... we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the application of parallel processing to scientific problems. 'That sounds like a bunch of baloney,' he said. 'Give me something real to do.'"

"When I got back to Boston I went to the library and discovered a book by Kimura on the subject, and much to my disappointment, all of our "discoveries" were covered in the first few pages. When I called back and told Richard what I had found, he was elated. 'Hey, we got it right!' he said. 'Not bad for amateurs.'"

http://www.longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php

Someone has been watching Transformers

I can't believe this is anything more than a publicity stunt, but this very orange and very large robot is supposed to clear forests (for fire prevention) and perhaps even fight fires. Amusing, if nothing else.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/giant-robot-fights-forest-fires.php

Autonomous Robotics Journal - latest issue

Papers on robots with whiskers and underwater robots, sounds like we are halfway to an autonomous walrus ....

On the use of likelihood fields to perform sonar scan matching localization
Authors: Antoni Burguera, Yolanda González and Gabriel Oliver
DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9108-0
pp. 203-222

Contact type dependency of texture classification in a whiskered mobile robot
Authors: Charles W. Fox, Ben Mitchinson, Martin J. Pearson, Anthony
G. Pipe, and Tony J. Prescott
DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9109-z
pp. 223-239

Maneuvering and control of a biomimetic autonomous underwater vehicle
Author: Jenhwa Guo
DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9117-z
pp. 241-249

http://www.springerlink.com/content/0929-5593

Imagine if scientists cooperated

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/what-if-scientists-didnt-compete/

"What if scientists, instead of rushing to publish or perish, chose to cooperate? Sean Cutler decided to do “a little experiment,” as he calls it, and you can see the results in the forthcoming issue of Science."

I think MRS and MAS researchers cooperate more than researchers in most fields do, because there is so much to be done to make even a single application work. There is also so much "low hanging fruit", that competing hard to be the first to some some particular problem rarely seems worth the effort - just find an interesting unsolved problem that there are not so many people working on.

IJRR accepting "Data papers"

I think this is a great idea, get peer-reviewed data on the web both for reducing start up costs for robotics research and for good comparison of techniques.

" From the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Robotics
Research,

The International Journal of Robotics Research announces a new genre
of paper – the data paper – for significant and peer reviewed archival
data sets. Data papers build on the success of archival multimedia
content for papers, another IJRR innovation that was introduced in
July 2001.

Our goal in creating data papers is to facilitate and encourage the
release of high quality, peer reviewed data sets to the robotics
community. We believe that the widespread availability of large data
sets (order of Gbytes) will overcome a significant entry barrier in
robotics which currently slows algorithmic development.

Benefits will come from eliminating the effort and expertise required
to collect these very large experimental data sets, and from
facilitating direct comparison to previously published work.

Further details are available in the editorial at http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/28/5/587"

Autopilot safer for Predators

It will be no surprise to researchers working in the field of robot teleoperation to hear that autopilots on UAVs are substantially better than human pilots at keeping their aircraft safe. Apparently the U.S. Air Force's highly trained "real" pilots, have crash landed $80 million worth of Predators, compared to none by the "Xbox trained" Army techs.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=62334

The upshot is that the Air Force is being forced to go to autonomous vehicles as quickly as possible.

Man injured by malfunctioning robot

"A Swedish company has been fined 25,000 kronor ($3,000) after a malfunctioning robot attacked and almost killed one of its workers at a factory north of Stockholm."

Apparently the man thought the robot was disconnected from power, but was not and managed to confuse him for a rock.

http://www.thelocal.se/19120.html

Nice application for Multi Robot System

MIT is working on a "Robot Gardener" that might do plant and harvest your vegetables for you. Sounds like a perfect basis for an interesting MRS.

http://www.technology.am/robot-gardener-plants-tends-and-harvests-114746.html

Highlight: "This robot pulls up to a docking station and “pees” on a tomato plant to water it. The robot moves to another tomato plant and uses the Web cam to recognize a tomato and grab it with the gripper."

Interesting TED talks

A couple of short videos on TED that may be of interest to MRS or MAS researchers:

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, an entirely new way to see and interpret scientific data, in full color and surround sound inside a massive metal sphere. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joann_kuchera_morin_tours_the_allosphere.html

Winner of IFAAMAS-08 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award announced

Ariel Procaccia receives the 2008 Victor Lesser Distinguished
Dissertation Award sponsored by IFAAMAS, the International Foundation
for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (http://www.ifaamas.org).

The selection committee for the IFAAMAS-08 Victor Lesser Distinguished
Dissertation Award is pleased to announce that Dr. Ariel Procaccia has
won the award. Dr. Procaccia received the Ph.D. in Computer Science
from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His thesis contains fundamental
contributions to computational social choice theory, covering a wide
variety of topics including the complexity of election manipulation,
the robustness of voting rules, the learnability of voting rules, and
incentive-compatible machine learning. Among other contributions, it
introduces a new way of analyzing the manipulability of social choice
functions, which has become influential in AAMAS and related research
communities.

The committee is also pleased to announce two runners-up: Dr. Matthew
Taylor, who received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University
of Texas at Austin, and Dr. Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, who received his
Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of
Michigan. Dr. Taylor's thesis concerns transfer learning and Dr.
Vorobeychik's thesis studies empirical mechanism design. Both
dissertations also make innovative and influential contributions to
the field of autonomous agents and multiagent systems.

Previous winners of this award were Radu Jurca (2007) and Vincent
Conitzer (2006).

The selection committee members were Vincent Conitzer, Les Gasser,
Radu Jurca, Sarit Kraus, Sandip Sen, and Makoto Yokoo (chair).

Military vision

Interesting (but somewhat unambitious) view of how autonomous systems and humans will work together in the future.

Check out the video.

Some of the technology already exists and has been demonstrated, but a lot of what is left to do for this particular vision is some messy engineering.

Scientists losing their jobs to automation?

Two articles have appeared in the popular science media in the last week talking about software that automatically made new scientific knowledge. In one case, the knowledge was completely new, while in the other case, the software autonomously learned something we already knew.

Here are the first and second articles.

It makes sense to me that this type of technology will do more over time. Science is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. That 99% often involves running large numbers of experiments, processing reams of data and designing slightly changed experiments based on the previous results. When the execution of the experiments can be automated, e.g., when a simulator is used, software is ideally suited to run the experiments.

Artificial intelligence is sometimes described as the science of search. Thus, the techniques developed in that field for 50 years, should be ideally suited to performing routine experiments. The design and processing of experiments and their results is essentially search over some complex, sometimes physical space.

But getting software to do that "1% inspiration" is likely a long way off. That leads to two possible outcomes: (a) Scientists starting actually working 1% of the time (about 20 minutes a week) or (b) Scientific discovery speeds up 100 fold. I know where my money is.

Robotic Fish for Pollution Monitoring

These 5ft (1.5m) long fish won't be a swarm in the intuitive sense, but there will be multiple of them. Nice application.

"EU Commissions Swarm of Robot Fish to Sniff Our Pollution in Ports

The systems the EU is buying for a pollution control project are one of the rare robotic systems shaped like animals for practical reasons, not just for looks.

Researchers in Southern England have won part of a European Union contract with a sophisticated, autonomous, marine-locomotive pollution detector that looks astonishingly like a fish.

The 2.5 million-pound ($3.6 million) contract was awarded by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme for SHOAL a project whose name looks like an acronym but isn’t, whose goal is to use robot fish to sniff out and report pollution in Europe’s harbors and rivers."

Read more.

A real programming challenge

Its hard enough to make an iCreate avoid a wall, imagine trying to get a biological brain do something useful.

"Life for Warwick’s robot began when his team at the University of Reading spread rat neurons onto an array of electrodes. After about 20 minutes, the neurons began to form connections with one another. “It’s an innate response of the neurons,” says Warwick, “they try to link up and start communicating.”

For the next week the team fed the developing brain a liquid containing nutrients and minerals. And once the neurons established a network sufficiently capable of responding to electrical inputs from the electrode array, they connected the newly formed brain to a simple robot body consisting of two wheels and a sonar sensor. "

Read the article here.

A Nanorobotics special issue of The International Journal of Robotics

Table of Contents is available online at:
http://ijr.sagepub.com/content/vol28/issue4/?etoc

Editorial: Special Issue on Current State of the Art and Future
Challenges in Nanorobotics
Constantinos Mavroidis and Antoine Ferreira
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 419-420
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/28/4/419

Computational Studies of a Protein-based Nanoactuator for Nanogripping
Applications
Gaurav Sharma, Constantinos Mavroidis, Kaushal Rege, Martin L.
Yarmush, and David Budil
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 421-435
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/421

Multiscale Design and Modeling of Protein-based Nanomechanisms for
Nanorobotics
Mustapha Hamdi and Antoine Ferreira
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 436-449
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/436

Residue Level Three-dimensional Workspace Maps for Conformational
Trajectory Planning of Proteins
Christopher Madden, Peter Bohnenkamp, Kazem Kazerounian, and Horea
T. Ilies
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 450-463
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/450

Towards Microcantilever-based Force Sensing and Manipulation: Modeling,
Control Development and Implementation
Reza Saeidpourazar and Nader Jalili
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 464-483
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/464

A Scaled Bilateral Control System for Experimental One-dimensional
Teleoperated Nanomanipulation
Cagdas D. Onal and Metin Sitti
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 484-497
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/484

Real-time Rigid-body Visual Tracking in a Scanning Electron Microscope
Bradley E. Kratochvil, Lixin Dong, and Bradley J. Nelson
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 498-511
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/498

Algorithms and Software for Nanomanipulation with Atomic Force Microscopes
A.A.G. Requicha, D.J. Arbuckle, B. Mokaberi, and J. Yun
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 512-522
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/512

Automated Nanomanufacturing System to Assemble Carbon Nanotube Based Devices
King Wai Chui Lai, Ning Xi, Carmen Kar Man Fung, Jiangbo Zhang,
Hongzhi Chen, Yilun Luo, and Uchechukwu C. Wejinya
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 523-536
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/523

Nanofabrication, Nanoinstrumentation and Nanoassembly by Nanorobotic
Manipulation
Toshio Fukuda, Masahiro Nakajima, Pou Liu, and Haitham ElShimy
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 537-547
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/537

Meeting the Challenge of Building Diamondoid Medical Nanorobots
Robert A. Freitas, Jr
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 548-557
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/548

Nanorobot for Brain Aneurysm
Adriano Cavalcanti, Bijan Shirinzadeh, Toshio Fukuda, and Seiichi Ikeda
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 558-570
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/558

Flagellated Magnetotactic Bacteria as Controlled MRI-trackable
Propulsion and Steering Systems for Medical Nanorobots Operating in the
Human Microvasculature
Sylvain Martel, Mahmood Mohammadi, Ouajdi Felfoul, Zhao Lu, and
Pierre Pouponneau
The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 571-582
http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/4/571

RoboBusiness

"If you are a business or technical professional looking to develop, understand or invest in the next generation of robotics, automation and intelligent systems products and technology, you cannot afford to miss this important event.

Attend RoboBusiness and learn:

- The anticipated revenue and unit volume trends for the mobile robotics and intelligent systems market
- The best ways to exploit robotics product and partnership opportunities
- The state of investment in the mobile robotics and intelligent systems market
- What robotic technology and standards currently exist in the open marketplace
- What solutions available today can be applied to solve different problem sets
- How robotics functionality can be added to existing products and services
- What industries and vertical market segments robotics are showing the greatest growth
- What are the opportunities for healthcare automation, lifestyle enhancement and medical robotics
"

http://www.robobusiness.com/

"Big Dog" going to Afghanistan?

I am not convinced of the reliability of this story (and there is nothing on Boston Dynamics website), but folks in Afghanistan might soon be in for an entertaining sight:

"Multiple news sources have reported that the US Military is deploying "BigDogs" to Afghanistan to assist in the fight against the enemy."

http://www.shadowspear.com/special_operations_kit/1289.html

Keynotes at HRI

Three interesting keynote presentations at HRI:

Akhil Madhani from Walt Disney Imagineering: Akhil Madhani (b. 1968) designed and built the "Silver Falcon" and the "Black Falcon," robots that allow surgeons to perform minimally invasive surgery by remote control, manipulate body tissue, sew and tie off sutures, and conduct other delicate procedures through incisions as small as one inch wide.

Steve Squyres from Cornell: Squyres has participated in a number of planetary spaceflight missions. From 1978 to 1981 he was an associate of the Voyager imaging science team, participating in analysis of imaging data from the encounters with Jupiter and Saturn. He was a radar investigator on the Magellan mission to Venus, a member of the Mars Observer gamma-ray spectrometer flight investigation team, and a co-investigator on the Russian Mars `96 mission

and

Rosalind Picard from MIT Media Labs: Picard is known internationally for envisioning and conducting research in affective computing—computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion or other affective phenomena—and, prior to that, for pioneering research in content-based image and video retrieval.

"Nature" requesting input

PLoS One is working hard to find ways of better peer-reviewing work and understanding the context and limitations of a research effort. Specifically, they are allowing annotations on papers to be added online. At the link below, you can help out by checking through comments and categorizing them.

Start here.

It would be great to see a new effective paradigm for peer-review to emerge, especially for the MAS, MRS community which I think is particularly poorly suited to traditional presentation and review processes.

9th International IFAC Symposium on Robot Control

The primary topics for the SYROCO 2009 will be "Robot Control in Human-
Robot Dynamic Interaction". Robot control technology is widely used for
space, surgery, rehabilitation, micro machine, entertainment, underwater,
civil engineering etc. It will continue to play an increasing role in the
area of human-robot dynamic interaction technology. The SYROCO 2009 will
also try to cover the whole range of areas in the field of robot control
including mobile robots. Contributions on basic research as well as on
relevant applications are included.

See the CFP.

Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award

Every year IFAAMAS gives out an award for the best agents related dissertation. In 2008, the award went to Radu Jurca for the dissertation entitled "Truthful Reputation Mechanisms for Online Systems". Radu went to Google (Switzerland) after finishing. Vincent Conitzer won it the year before for a thesis entitled " Computational Aspects of Preference Aggregation." Vince is now a tenure track Professor at Duke in the U.S.. (This information took some serious googling to find out, which it shouldn't have! IFAAMAS get your act together and publicize this award.)

Victor Lesser is considered the Great Grandfather of the agents field -- Sandip Sen's students are academic great grandchildren of Prof. Lesser. It won't be long until Lesser is a Great Great Grandfather (see http://aigp.eecs.umich.edu/)

To submit nominations for this years award:

Nominations are invited for the 2008 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award sponsored by IFAAMAS, the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (http://www.ifaamas.org).

This award includes a certificate signed by the IFAAMAS Chair and 1500EUR. Eligible doctoral dissertations are those defended between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008 in the area of Autonomous Agents or Multiagent Systems.

For more detail see here.

A Multiagent Reinforcement Learning Algorithm with Non-linear Dynamics

A couple of newly published JAIR articles are of potential interest to MAS researchers, this one in particular:

S. Abdallah and V. Lesser (2008)
"A Multiagent Reinforcement Learning Algorithm with Non-linear Dynamics",
Volume 33, pages 521-549

For quick access go to here.

Abstract:
Several multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms have been proposed to optimize agents' decisions. Due to the complexity of the problem, the majority of the previously developed MARL algorithms assumed agents either had some knowledge of the underlying game (such as Nash equilibria) and/or observed other agents actions and the rewards they received.

We introduce a new MARL algorithm called the Weighted Policy Learner (WPL), which allows agents to reach a Nash Equilibrium (NE) in benchmark 2-player-2-action games with minimum knowledge. Using WPL, the only feedback an agent needs is its own local reward (the agent does not observe other agents actions or rewards). Furthermore, WPL does not assume that agents know the underlying game or the corresponding Nash Equilibrium a priori. We experimentally show that our algorithm converges in benchmark two-player-two-action games. We also show that our algorithm converges in the challenging Shapley's game where previous MARL algorithms failed to converge without knowing the underlying game or the NE. Furthermore, we show that WPL outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms in a more realistic setting of 100 agents interacting and learning concurrently.

An important aspect of understanding the behavior of a MARL algorithm is analyzing the dynamics of the algorithm: how the policies of multiple learning agents evolve over time as agents interact with one another. Such an analysis not only verifies whether agents using a given MARL algorithm will eventually converge, but also reveals the behavior of the MARL algorithm prior to convergence. We analyze our algorithm in two-player-two-action games and show that symbolically proving WPL's convergence is difficult, because of the non-linear nature of WPL's dynamics, unlike previous MARL algorithms that had either linear or piece-wise-linear dynamics. Instead, we numerically solve WPL's dynamics differential equations and compare the solution to the dynamics of previous MARL algorithms.

Smart Dust

"Molecular Forklifts Overcome Obstacle To 'Smart Dust':

Chip-based labs have been developed in recent years as portable tools to gauge the presence of bioweapons, pollution, or to conduct on-the-spot blood tests. They are essentially assays, or ways to test for different pathogens, chemicals or compounds. The research was funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with additional support from the Office of Naval Research"

Read article.

The dust is unlikely to run any version of Java in the near term.

Video wrap of commercial advances in 2008

Quick video wrap up of robots from companies like Honda, iRobot and Toyota that debuted in 2008, from PC World.

Watch the video (after enduring the ad.)

The physical capabilities of these things are pretty impressive, but, likely because the video all comes from big demos, the movement is slow and careful. No doubt, in the comfort of the lab, the behavior is a lot smoother and faster.

ICRA versus AAMAS acceptance rates

Although down from its early very high acceptance rates, the premier robotics conference, ICRA, accepts about 40% of submitted papers (43% in 2009). This is nearly double the AAMAS acceptance rate and about double the acceptance rate of other major AI conferences (IJCAI is in the teens).

ICRA is a large conference, much bigger than AAMAS and similar in size to IJCAI (the Grandaddy of AI conferences.) It has more than five times the number of presentations than AAMAS and three times as many oral presentations as IJCAI.

There are clearly different philosophies of the different organizing committees: ICRA accepts more papers, has a bigger conference, AAMAS and IJCAI accept less papers, limiting the conference size (since, overwhelmingly, relatively few people attend a conference where they do not have a paper).

The question is which is a better approach for advancing science (admittedly, only one of several reasons for conferences).

A bigger conference lets more people get together and discuss, possibly advancing science faster than the smaller conferences. The counter argument is that the smaller conferences are higher quality and therefore advance science more efficiently.

From a game theory perspective, I would imagine that the more selective conferences have even higher relative quality than the acceptance rates suggest, because authors only submit high quality work.

Perhaps both work for their respective fields. Robotics is a slightly younger field, with lots of ideas to be vetted, while AI is general is a bit more mature. The big robotics conference lets lots of ideas in, the smaller AI conferences efficiently cut out some of the noise.

I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer.

Number of AAMAS Workshops

I was surprised by the number of workshops proposed for AAMAS'09, so I went back and look at the 6 previous conferences.

2009: 27 workshops
2008: 26 workshops, with 3 more cancelled.
2007: 31 workshops, with 1 more cancelled.
2006: 28 workshops, with 3 more cancelled.
2005: 28 workshops, with 1 more cancelled.
2004: 24 workshops, with 1 more cancelled.
2003: 22 workshops.
2002: 17 workshops.

So, I guess this year is pretty much in line with previous years. After a quick ramp up, there has been between 24-30 for the last 6 years. I wonder which 1.8 will get cancelled this year?

AAMAS '09 Workshops

W1 AOSE Agent Oriented Software Engineering
W2 ATOP Agent-based Technologies and applications for enterprise interOPerability
W3 ProMAS Programming MAS
W4 ADMI Agents and Data Mining Interaction
W5 SOCASE Service-Oriented Computing: Agents, Semantics, and Engineering
W6 Trust-09 Trust in MAS
W7 ArgMAS Argumentation in MAS
W8 MABS Multi-Agent Based Simulation
W9 COIN Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms
W10 AGS Agents for Games and Simulation
W11 OptMAS Optimization in MAS
W12 MIMS Mixed-Initiative MAS
W13 ALA Adaptive and Learning Agents
W14 WEIN Emergent Intelligence of Networked Agents
W15 EduMAS Educational use for MAS
W16 Standards of Multimodal Dialogue Acts for Embodied Agents
W17 ABSHLE Agent Based Systems for Human Learning and Entertainment
W18 DALT Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies
W19 MSDM Multi-Agent Sequential Decision Making in Uncertain Domains
W20 Empathic Agents
W21 MMAS Massively Multi-Agent Systems: Models, Methods and Tools
W22 BASeWEB Business Agents and the Semantic Web
W23 ATSN Agent Technology for Sensor Networks
W24 AP2PC Agents in P2P computing
W25 ACAN Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiations
W26 ADAPT Agent Design: Adapting from Practice to Theory
W27 AMEC Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce

http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/workshops.html

Most cited MAS articles on google scholar

Here are the top five most cited articles returned by google scholar on a search for "Multi agent":

Ferber, "Multi-Agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence", 1999

Lux and Marchesi, "SCALING AND CRITICALITY IN A STOCHASTIC MULTI-AGENT MODEL OF A FINANCIAL MARKET", Nature: International weekly journal of science, 1999

Littman, "Markov games as a framework for multi-agent reinforcement learning", ICML, 1994

Nwana, Ndumu, Lee, and Collis, "ZEUS: A toolkit for building distributed multi-agent
systems'' Applied Artificial Intelligence, 1999

Ferber and Gutknecht, “"A meta-model for the analysis and design of organizations in multiagent
systems",” (ICMAS-98).

I guess the golden age for multi-agents was about 10 years ago ....

Multi-Robot Systems for Warehouse Management

From Sciam:

Kiva's robots resemble ground-hugging iRobot Roombas more than the humanoid robot Sonny from the 2004 movie I, Robot. Kiva robots and Roombas, however, are the reality of artificially intelligent robotics. They may not be able to run, jump or speak, but they can efficiently move shelves laden with heavy inventory and clean up messes. And with customers like Staples and Walgreens populating their distribution centers with Kiva's creations, "we're finally seeing massive, multirobot systems at the commercial level," [Peter] Wurman says. "As the scale becomes bigger, the decision-making skills become more important."

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=artificial-intelligence-robots-rule

AAMAS Doctoral Mentoring

Final Call for Doctoral Mentoring Program

The Eighth International Joint Conference on
AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS (AAMAS 2009)
Budapest, Hungary
Symposium Date: May 10, 2009
Conference Dates: May 10-15, 2009
http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/

AAMAS 2009 will include a doctoral mentoring program, intended for PhD
students in advanced stages of their research. This program will
provide an opportunity for students to interact closely with
established researchers in their fields, to receive feedback on their
work and to get advice on managing their careers.

Specifically, the goals of the program are:
* To match each student with an established researcher in the
community (who will act as a mentor). The mentor will interact closely
with the student, will provide feedback on research, help form new
contacts, etc.
* To allow students an opportunity to present their work to a
friendly audience of other students as well as mentors.
* To provide students with contacts and professional networking opportunities.
* The doctoral mentoring program will consist of opportunities for
interactions between mentors and their mentorees prior to the
conference, as well as a one day doctoral symposium.

A.1 Submission Requirements

We encourage submissions from PhD students at advanced stages of their
research within the Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems field.
Based on the submissions, the organizing committee will select a group
of students that will be invited to participate in the program.
Participants will be expected to take active part in all doctoral
mentoring program activities.

Each submission should include a set of documents from the students,
and a recommendation letter from the advisor. The submission package
should include:
1. A two-page extended abstract of the student's thesis (in the AAMAS
submission format)
2. A personal research statement (one page)
3. A short (2-page) resume (CV)
4. A recommendation letter from the advisor.

Submissions of the first three items should be sent in electronic form
(PDF), to the doctoral mentoring chair (Stacy Marsella,
mentoring@aamas09.org), by January 31, 2009.

In addition, the dissertation advisor should send the last item (a
letter of recommendation) by e-mail to mentoring@aamas09.org. The
letter should address the expected benefit of attending (to the
student), the significance of the research, and the expected date for
thesis submission. This letter can be sent in either plain text or PDF
format. The student's name must be clearly pointed out in the letter.

A.2 Important Dates
* January 31: Submission package due
* February 28: Acceptance notifications
* March 12: Camera-ready copy due
* May 10: Doctoral Mentoring Symposium

The one-day symposium will be held on the first day of the conference.

Doctoral Mentoring Chair
Stacy Marsella
University of Southern California
marsella [at] ict.usc.edu

Web page:
http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/mentoring.html

Welcome

The plan for this blog is to keep readers up-to-date with the world of multi-agent and multi-robot research.