📢ANTS 2026 Call for Late Breaking Results & Fresh Perspectives (posters & demos)
Early-bird registration ends this Friday (20 Feb)
We welcome interdisciplinary work on collective behaviour and self-organised systems, across science, engineering, arts, and humanities.
Details at ants2026.org
📢 ANTS 2026 deadline extended to 20 Nov 2025!
No further extensions will be granted.
If you haven’t submitted yet, there’s still time to share your latest work with the swarm intelligence community.
We look forward to seeing your contributions!
Also, our first workshop on cultural evolution at #alife2025: thanks to invited speakers James Borg and @uchiyama.bsky.social for their talks in session 1! In session 2, we had an interactive generative game with some creative creatures and cultures emerging. Thanks to all who came along 👾🦠
A photo of Alan looking happy, wearing a beige t-shirt and glasses.
What would you love to know about #robot ethics? 🤖
Later this season, I'll be chatting to Prof. Alan Winfield (@alan-winfield.bsky.social) from @uwebristolofficial.bsky.social about developing new standards for ethics and transparency in robotics.
Send me your questions for Alan in the comments!
Today is #alife2025 day 1! Workshops under way... We have our own workshop tmw on Cultural Evolution of Planet X, 13.30-16.30, room 4F. Exciting keynotes from James Borg and @uchiyama.bsky.social. Join us!
🙌 Thanks to Juan Camilo López Vargas, Edwin Garavito, Germán A. Díaz, Eliana Peña & Laura Daniela Garcés C. for great conversations on robotics, manufacturing, optimization, finance & Santander’s culture.
👉 Working together to make robot swarms practical off-the-shelf systems.
🇨🇴 A follow-up to my days in Colombia: How can robot swarms be incorporated into production schedules and manufacturing workflows?
Huge thanks to Universidad Industrial de Santander for hosting me to brainstorm with faculty, students & the OPALO group on robots, collective intelligence & industry.
A purple and red octopus talk to each other on the tin can telephone. Purple octopus says “want to connect your students with real Scientists?” Then red octopus says “Skype a scientist matches groups with scientists for virtual q&as. It’s free!” And then an orange flapjack octopus says “get a match at skypeascientist.com”
Alrght everybody, get your Tin Can Telephones out. We need your help!
We reach new people by word of mouth. Send all your educator friends this pic! Teachers, librarians, scout troop leaders, etc! We offer our program for free, so we need help getting the word out without advertising $$.
🚨 Calling all Swarm Roboticists! 🚨
The npj Robotics Collection on Swarm Robotics is open for submissions! (Nature Portfolio)
We welcome contributions on physical robot swarms — methods, platforms, applications, and human aspects.
🔗 www.nature.com/collections/...
Thanks for sharing and reposting!
Huge thanks to Profs. W. Achicanoy, A. Pantoja, J. Revelo & C. Viteri for believing in this plan, and to the amazing students who brought ATRIZ to life. 🙏
Acknowledgments to Universidad de Nariño and its Departamento de Electrónica (Convocatoria Docente 2022, Project No. 2703).
ATRIZ now has infrastructure & robots on par with leading swarm labs 🌍.
It builds on work I started during my PhD in Belgium with M. Kegeleirs and M. Birattari at IRIDIA 🇧🇪, now being deployed in Latin America to grow the regional swarm robotics community.
Exciting to see it take shape! 🚀
🐝 Swarmies in Colombia! 🇨🇴🤖
Back home for a one-week workshop launching ATRIZ, the new swarm robotics lab I have been helping build at Universidad de Nariño, Colombia.
After 5 years of effort, MSc students now get hands-on with multi-robot systems, team-based learning, and collective robotics.
@sabinehauert.bsky.social @swarmdynamics.bsky.social @khuludalharthi.bsky.social @suetl.bsky.social @dgarzonramos.com @mchimento.bsky.social @ai4cihub.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de @cbehav.bsky.social
🚨 Last days to submit! 🚨
Join the Workshop on Cultural Evolution of Planet X at @alife2025.bsky.social (Kyoto, Oct 7).
We welcome abstracts on cultural evolution and emergent culture in artificial systems. Work presented elsewhere too!
📅 Deadline: Sept 20
🔗 sites.google.com/view/planetx...
From Random Notes to Emergent Orchestras.
Lluc Bono presents at @css-conference.bsky.social our latest results on creating a robot swarm that composes & performs musical pieces. A framework to study emergence of creativity in music through artificial physical agents @cbehav.bsky.social #CCS2025
📣 Interested in cultural evolution and artificial life? Call for abstracts for our upcoming workshop at @alife2025.bsky.social. Accepted abstracts will be presented as flash talks, and are not archival. Deadline is the September 12, w/ rolling acceptance. Details: sites.google.com/view/planetx... 🧪
Applications close in one week. Join our dynamic and growing Centre @soham-centre.bsky.social if you’re passionate about AI-enhanced collective intelligence.
The second edition of my book will be released on the 4th of July.
The book, updated to rolling/kilted, includes two new chapters:
1) Deep ROS 2: Executors, execution model, callback groups and Real-Time.
2) Contributing to ROS 2 software (licenses, git, .)
I hope you like 🤓
Join us at the Cultural Evolution of Planet X: Emergent Creativity and Wisdom of the Crowds workshop at #ALIFE2025!
Explore how we design and imagine cultural evolution on an artificial planet X, drawing inspiration from cultural evolution in animals on Earth. 🌌👾
🔗 Details: lnkd.in/eg32maqs
Much of the AI hype is hype. Most or all food delivery robots are driven by low cost remote workers. Waymo admits that every two miles or so there is a human intervention. Humanoids demos are tele-oped. Here is an AI powered coding app revealed. How many others? www.businesstoday.in/technology/n...
Excited to introduce the Darwin Gödel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agents. We harness the power of open-ended algorithms to search for agentic systems that get better at coding, including improving their own code.
Today we’re excited to welcome @jonaskuresearch.bsky.social from @uni-konstanz.de to our next CASCB Talk! Join us at 12:00 to explore how swarms of robots learn complex behaviours via modular design, imitation learning & open-ended techniques.
📍 ZT 702 & online
Our next Collective Behaviour Online Seminar #CollBehavSeminar is a double act! @palinabartash.bsky.social & David Bierbach "Collective air-breathing in the largest freshwater fish on Earth"
3rd June 2025, @2pm UK time.
Subscribe to lists.uu.se/sympa/subscr... to keep up to date on our seminars!
We are excited to announce that the Fifteenth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2026) will be taking place on June 8-10, 2026 in Darmstadt, Germany.
📅 Submissions: Nov 10, 2025
📅 Notification: Jan 30, 2026
📅 Conference: June 8-10, 2026
🌐 ants2026.org
Cool videos from our new paper applying Diversity Search to Flow-Lenia to explore a vast space of eco-evolutionary dynamics. Preprint paper, dataset and online visualization tool soon available, stay tuned!
I'll present this and other Lenia experiments on May 27 at www.dem.eco
#ALife #Open-endedness
Computer scientists at the University of Bath have proposed over 100 ways to reprogram domestic cleaning robots to complete additional household tasks, including watering the plants, bringing groceries in from the car, or even playing with the cat! 🤖 techxplore.com/news/2025-04... #Robots #Robotics
Swarming in the Wild: A Distributed
Communication-less Lloyd-based Algorithm dealing
with Uncertainties
by Manuel Boldrer, Vít Krátký, Viktor Walter, Martin Saska
Fully distributed #UAV swarming in forests; no comms, no GPS, just onboard sensors. It works! :)
#swarm
arxiv.org/pdf/2504.18840
Liang Li and team have developed a VR system for fish to decipher how they school. The team uncovered the natural ‘control law’ used by zebrafish to coordinate behavior with others.
@icouzin.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de @cbehav.bsky.social
Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Excited our #AAMAS2025 paper has been selected as Best Paper Award finalist. It studies on-demand delivery with UAVs that learn their capabilities
🎥 youtu.be/9afhI1pgeI8
📄 arxiv.org/abs/2504.08585
@salahtalamali.bsky.social @genkimiyauchi.bsky.social @tuda.bsky.social @sheffielduni.bsky.social
How safe is a swarm of robots? 🤖
Find out at our next AI Happy Hour on Apr 28, where PhD candidate Raina Zakir will explain what swarm robotics are, how they make collective decisions, and how they can safely handle disruptions from malicious agents.
🎟️ Register for your spot here: buff.ly/UVKCpxe
