The MICRoBES Project, an Experimental Approach towards 'Open Collective Robotics'

International audienceWe focus here on "Open Collective Robotics", a research domain interested in studying concepts and techniques which could lead to true collectivities between humans and robots. We also present the MICRobES project, a long-term experiment intended to investigate how to design such collectivities. Therefore, the MICRobES robots have no prior specific functionality, they have to develop individual competences, a social organization, and sociability towards humans in order to "survive" in a dynamic environment

Collective Grounded Representations for Robots

Realistic applications of autonomous Robotics face a lot of diculties in real environments. To navigate, self-localize and cooperate in such contexts, a multi-robot system has to find a way to represent and share knowledge about the world it is living in. In this paper we discuss the necessity and the advantages of grounding representations and communications of a robots team in real perceptions. We describe a technical framework designed for this purpose, which is based on the classification of the perceptions of a robots population. Percepts must have specific properties to enable grounding, and we present particular percepts well suited to this process. Finally we discuss the possible usages of grounded classes and propose a grid representation for fusion and exchange