IRIDIA participates in the project H2SWARM: Hierarchical Heterogeneous Swarm, funded by the European Science Foundation within the EUROCORES programme "Bio-inspired Engineering of Sensors, Actuators & Systems (EuroBioSAS)". The main goal of the project is the study of hierarchical communication and control strategies for swarms of heterogeneous robots, which, despite the differences among sub-groups, coherently operate in an integrated manner to achieve a common goal. This will be achieved by looking at how Nature structures and organises large groups, such as ant colonies or honeybee swarms.
Heterogeneous swarms pose a number of research questions that have been investigated only to a limited extent so far. For instance, what are the relevant interactions among heterogeneous groups that can lead to an overall coherent behaviour? How to design self-organising robotic systems with multiple levels of organisation, which can allow intra- and inter-group coordination? How do swarm robotic systems compare with more classical engineering approaches in practical application scenarios? The H2SWARM project will address these questions with a multidisciplinary approach that is strongly grounded on biological studies.
New Erasmus Mundus Master – Esteban
Zimányi is the coordinator of a new European Master's Programme in Information Technologies for Business Intelligence (IT4BI).
The main objective of the programme is to train computer scientists who understand and help develop the strategies of modern enterprise decision makers. The curriculum is jointly delivered by Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium, Université François Rabelais Tours (UFRT) in France, Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP) in France, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Spain, and Technische Universität Berlin (TUB) in Germany. This consortium will prepare the graduates not only to answer today's professional challenges by a strong connection with the needs coming from the industry, but also to pursue their studies into doctorate programs, through strong connections with the researchers' and innovators' views. IT4BI is a 2-year (4 semesters, 120 ECTS) programme.
New journal – Esteban
Zimányi is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal on Data
Semantics (JoDS), published by Springer. As in modern distributed
environments, data comes from heterogeneous, autonomous sources,
semantic elicitation and availability of appropriate semantic metadata
are the key to meaningful use of information. JoDS will be devoted to
research and development issues related to semantics. The first issue
of this quarterly journal will appear in March 2012.
Best Video Award, AAAI-11 AI Video Competition - The video
"Swarmanoid, the movie" won the Best Video Award at the AAAI-11 AI
Video Competition! This video, written and directed by Mauro Birattari
and Rehan O'Grady, presents the main results of the Swarmanoid
project, a FET-OPEN project funded by the European Commission and
coordinated by Marco Dorigo. For more information, see the website of
the Swarmanoid project.
The fifth edition of "Programmation Orientée Objet" is out -
La programmation orientée objet est en quelque sorte le B.A.-BA des cursus informatiques, c'est pourquoi sa bonne compréhension est indispensable pour la suite de l'apprentissage. Étudiants et enseignants seront conquis par cette 5e édition qui détaille minutieusement tous les mécanismes, en s'appuyant sur des exemples concrets empruntés à Java, C#, C++, Python, PHP 5, UML 2 LinQ, etc. Une référence incontestable.
Le livre est disponible sur Amazon
The 11th European Conference on Artificial Life -
Hugues Bersini and Marco Dorigo from IRIDIA are part of the organising team. Back then, in the early 1990's, the first two ECAL conferences in Paris and Brussels were mainly centered on theoretical biology and the physics of complex systems. Today, we feel that Artificial Life can look back on these origins and take more inspiration from new developments at the intersection between computer science and theoretical biology—thus it is our wish to refocus the conference on complex biological systems. Closing a loop, this ECAL will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1st ECAL and will be framed as a tribute to the late Francisco Varela, co-organizer in 1991 with two of this year's committee members (Paul Bourgine, CREA, and Hugues Bersini, IRIDIA). We look forward to seeing you in Paris.
The Web site is : www.ecal11.org
Research project – A new project called "Advanced ICT Platform for Rehabilitation" (ICT4Rehab) started on February 1st, 2011. The ICT4Rehab project addresses a new rehabilitation paradigm in the domain of muscle spasticity rehabilitation. It will require the integration of various data sources, the development of novel algorithms and putting into practice several ICT tools supporting 2D/3D user interaction.
The project's main results will be the ICT4Rehab platform that will include the developed technology in several demonstrators (a Serious Gaming demonstrator and a Clinical Analysis demonstrator). Developments will be guided by the goals of generalising the methodology to other pathologies requiring motivational sustainability and clinical analysis, and to lead to a technological platform for future developments in diverse areas.
ICT4Rehab is a research project supported by the Brussels Capital Region. In addition to CoDE-WIT, there are three other teams taking part in the project:
ULB MLG and
ULB LABO and
VUB ETRO.
Research project – A new project called "Open Semantic Cloud for Brussels" (OSCB) started on February 1st, 2011. OSCB aims to cover Brussels, metaphorically speaking of course, with a cloud of structured and interlinked information elements produced by “atomizing” a collection of relevant databases and other resources. Linked Data is a global initiative to interlink resources on the Web using two “simple” technologies: Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) for accessing the resources and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for representing knowledge and annotating those resources. Various governments (UK, US, Germany) are launching initiatives to (a) make public sector data easily available with Linked Data and (b) encourage researchers to analyze the data as well as application developers to build applications around that data, in order to stimulate innovation, business and the general wealth of society.
OSCB is a research project supported by the Brussels Capital Region.
In addition to CoDE-WIT, there are three other teams taking part in the project:
VUB STAR Lab and
VUB ETRO and
EHB-CVC.