Swarm Robotics, or: The Smartness of 'a bunch of cheap dumb things'

Not only recent Science Fiction – e.g., Star Trek Beyond (USA 2016) – celebrates the capacities of robot collectives. Also RoboCup, an annual robot soccer competition, or Harvard University’s Kilobot Project show stunning examples of the central idea behind Swarm Robotics: »[U]sing swarms is the same as getting a bunch of small cheap dumb things to do the same job as an expensive smart thing« (Beni/Wang 1989). This article examines some crucial aspects of the techno-history of a research field which intertwines engineering and biological knowledge and whose applications deal with compelling questions about synchronization and self-organization in changing environments – on the ground, in the air, and under water

Architecture, Space and Information in Constructions Built by Humans and Social Insects: a Conceptual Review

The similarities between the structures built by social insects and by humans have led to a convergence of interests between biologists and architects. This new, de facto interdisciplinary community of scholars needs a common terminology and theoretical framework in which to ground its work. In this conceptually oriented review paper, we review the terms “information”, “space” and “architecture” to provide definitions that span biology and architecture. A framework is proposed on which interdisciplinary exchange may be better served, with the view that this will aid better cross fertilisation between disciplines, working in the areas of collective behaviour and analysis of the structures and edifices constructed by non-humans; and to facilitate how this area of study may better contribute to the field of architecture. We then use these definitions to discuss the informational content of constructions built by organisms and the influence these have on behaviour, and vice versa. We review how spatial constraints inform and influence interaction between an organism and its environment, and examine the reciprocity of space and information on construction and the behaviour of humans and social insects

Emergence of collective behaviour. How Individual Regulation Matters in Elaborating Team Patterns in Football

This project analysed processes leading to the emergence of collective behaviour patterns. Collective behaviour, considered as self-organized, emerges from individual activities that interplay as the activity unfolds. One aim of this project was to explore how individuals regulate their activity to participate to the elaboration of collective behaviour. Sport science literature did not consider the individual regulation as a main focus to understand team behaviour. The regulation has been assumed rather than investigated. To this end, we described the variety of informational resources used by team members during a football game. We adopted an epistemological approach that was respectful of how humans regulate their agent-environment coupling, which was the enactive approach. From this approach, sense-making is assumed to be central in delineating the dynamics of the agent-environment coupling, and the phenomenological experience of the agent was seriously considered in the study designs. The results identified various informational resources, which we ranked along a continuum from local resources to global resources. The subsequent goal was to understand the relationship between individual regulation and its consequences in the collective behaviour. Grounded in the use of a computer simulation tool, the project simulated the spatiotemporal collective behaviour of a multi-agent system built to capture the essentials of football team behaviours and to evaluate how the dynamical outcomes (i.e., the collective behaviour patterns) depend on individual adjustment modalities. These adjustment modalities were implemented in the simulation. More specifically, the simulation study generated a large amount of spatiotemporal data that are hard to capture in ecological situation with natural setting, in order to test to what extent the collective behaviour dynamical outcomes were changed when a single players changed their adjustments. The collective behaviour was characterised through metrics accounting for team spatiotemporal properties such as surface area and team stretching. The results showed a condensed behaviour associated with the local adjustment modality and a deployed behaviour associated with global adjustment modalities. A complementary study investigated the possibilities of controlling human regulation through interaction rules. The results showed that various interaction rules involved different informational resources and adjustment modality. Moreover, the results demonstrated that a local informational resource did not necessarily involve a local adjustment which describe the complexity of the regulation processes

Collective innovation

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 178-179).The ability to innovate sits at the heart of an organization's ability to succeed in a competitive environment. An organization can innovate by improving existing products, services, or processes or by generating new products, services, or processes. Achieving successful, repeated organizational innovation, however, is a significant challenge. The hurdles to such innovation run the gamut from psychological to structural to procedural. Managers can fall victim to myopia and other human level challenges. Organizational processes, structures, and values can short circuit innovation as well. Given these challenges, we posit that an innovation strategy embracing the concepts of collective intelligence and openness may enable organizations to surmount these hurdles. We refer to this approach as Collective Innovation and define it as a connected, open, and collaborative process that generates, develops, prioritizes, and executes new ideas. To develop our argument, we surveyed literature from a wide array of disciplines including economics, organizational behavior, social psychology, and organizational change.(cont.) We begin this thesis by drawing a connection between the economic theories of Adam Smith and Ronald Coase and research into the changing workplace by Thomas Malone. We then introduce the concepts of collective intelligence and openness, core tenets of Collective Innovation. After introducing Collective Innovation, we examine its place in the history of innovation strategy. Next, we outline and describe the four stages of the Collective Innovation process. Having dealt mainly in theory, we then turn to the application of Collective Innovation and the myriad challenges that managers will face when attempting to implement such a strategy. Keeping in mind these challenges, we outline four ways in which organizations might use Collective Innovation to power the exploration-side of their operations. Finally, we revisit several remaining questions before concluding our analysis.by Alex Slawsby [and] Carlos Rivera.M.B.A