🔥 Published today, and just in time for summer conferences, here are your guidelines for presenting badly www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/fqa92
Carlo Pinciroli
@carlo.pinciroli.net
Associate Prof. at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, I study #algorithms and #software #engineering for #robot #swarms. I bake stuff in my spare time. https://carlo.pinciroli.net #robotics #multirobot #multiagent #ai #risotto
It was a blast to visit the @cbehav.bsky.social ! I am impressed by their concentration of talent and creativity. I am also grateful for the warm hospitality of @swarmdynamics.bsky.social and @joefresna.bsky.social, who made this day even more special! Let's write a paper already :-)
Giovanni Reina@joefresna.bsky.social · last yr.Very happy to welcome a good friend @carlo.pinciroli.net in the wonderful Konstanz to speak about cool science for a couple of days! Hopefully, these meetings will trigger some fun collaboration!
Today we’re thrilled to welcome Carlo Pinciroli @carlo.pinciroli.net from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute for our next CASCB Talk! Join us at 12:00 to explore heterogeneity in robot swarms! 📍 ZT 702 & online www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-b...
Very happy to welcome a good friend @carlo.pinciroli.net in the wonderful Konstanz to speak about cool science for a couple of days! Hopefully, these meetings will trigger some fun collaboration!
Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour@cbehav.bsky.social · last yr.Today we’re thrilled to welcome Carlo Pinciroli @carlo.pinciroli.net from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute for our next CASCB Talk! Join us at 12:00 to explore heterogeneity in robot swarms! 📍 ZT 702 & online www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-b...
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
Best week ever, with Josh Bloom defending his PhD dissertation titled "Global State Prediction for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Collective Transport." Congratulations! Many thanks to Dr. Nicola Bezzo, Dr. Kevin Leahy, and Dr. Guanrui Li for your time and detailed feedback!
More great news! Stephen Powers defended his PhD dissertation, "Symbolic Model Extraction in Homogeneous Heterogeneous Swarms." Many thanks to Dr. Eliseo Ferrante, Dr. Kevin Leahy, and Prof. Bill Michalson, for your time and insightful feedback!
Great news! @ashay-aswale.bsky.social defended his PhD dissertation "Simultaneous Task Scheduling and Coalition Formation in Multi-robot Systems Using Centralized and Decentralized Methods." Many thanks to Dr. Emanuele Garone, Dr. Kevin Leahy and Dr. Guanrui Li, for your time and great feedback!
I'm proud to announce that @khaiyichin.bsky.social defended his PhD dissertation titled "Sensing Through Faults: Collective Perception by Imperfect Robot Swarms." Many thanks to @swarmdynamics.bsky.social, Dr. Kevin Leahy and Dr. Nitin Sanket, for your time and your thoughtful feedback!
More and more, BlueSky is where academics share their findings.
Altmetric@altmetric.com · last yr.THREAD The numbers are in. @bsky.app research sharing volumes vs X Formerly Twitter In March 2024, on most days, Bluesky hosts more posts linked to research published in 2025 than X. By quite a lot. Release the Kraken... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics 1/11
Robotic insects? Sound useful but still very creepy. @ericowens.bsky.social www.livescience.com/technology/r...
MIT builds swarms of tiny robotic insect drones that can fly 100 times longer than previous designs
Scientists have built a new type of robotic insect that can fly 100 times longer than previous generations.
livescience.com
We're excited to announce the first Evolving Self-organisation workshop at GECCO 2025! Submission deadline: March 26, 2025 More information: evolving-self-organisation-workshop.github.io
This review paper by @guillaume-garrigos.com on SGD-related algorithms is a fantastic resource, offering elegant, self-contained, and concise proofs in a single, accessible reference. arxiv.org/pdf/2301.11235
3/ AI breakthroughs like AlphaFold wouldn’t be possible without decades of work on datasets. e.g., AlphaFold was trained on protein structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB), which took 50+ years and ~$20 *billion* to create. This is the kind of foundational effort AI needs.
In recent decades, wildland fires have been enabled by many factors, including the legacy of fire suppression, human settlement and distribution patterns, other management actions, and even natural climate variability. 1/
I have a draft of my introduction to cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning on arxiv. Check it out and let me know any feedback you have. The plan is to polish and extend the material into a more comprehensive text with Frans Oliehoek. arxiv.org/abs/2405.06161
A First Introduction to Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has exploded in popularity in recent years. While numerous approaches have been developed, they can be broadly categorized into three main types: centralized ...
arxiv.org
Why are evolved networks (such as gene and metabolic webs) different from engineering designs? One lesson is provided by evolved electronic circuits, as shown in this @sciam.bsky.social paper by John Koza jstor.org/stable/pdf/2...
A rare actual good news story: bees – both honey bees and wild bees – seem to be doing better in the UK. Bee-friendly planting, less pesticide use and an uptick in beekeeping are all having results 🐝 🎉 inews.co.uk/inews-lifest...
The good news about bees: Why they're returning to British gardens
Thanks to a combination of efforts by beekeepers, better farming practices and reduced pesticide use, populations are showing signs of recovery
inews.co.uk
Astonishing how many RL bottlenecks are resolved simply by “make simulator go fast”. What if we had prioritized engineering over algorithms years ago?
1/ Okay, one thing that has been revealed to me from the replies to this is that many people don't know (or refuse to recognize) the following fact: The unts in ANN are actually not a terrible approximation of how real neurons work! A tiny 🧵. 🧠📈 #NeuroAI #MLSky
Blake Richards@tyrellturing.bsky.social · 2y agoWhy does anyone have any issue with this? I've seen people suggesting it's problematic, that neuroscientists won't like it, and so on. But, I literally don't see why this is problematic...
Pretty much my inner voice as I write proposals
Jim Coan@jimmycoan.bsky.social · 3y agoVeronica Coan: “Daddy, do scientists just spend most of their time saying, ‘this is bullshit, this is bullshit, and this is also bullshit?’” Jim Coan: “Yes, my love, that is what scientists spend most of their time doing.”
In today's lecture in my nonlinear dynamics and chaos course, I tried to give intuition for where chaos comes from. It's caused by repeated stretching and folding of phase space.
Nothing cooler than emulating nature very well: "Bird-inspired drone can jump for take-off" [via EPFL News] 🧪🤖🐦 "EPFL researchers have built a drone that can #walk, #hop, and #jump into #flight with the aid of birdlike legs..." actu.epfl.ch/news/bird-in... #robotics #bird #drone #mechatronics
Bird-inspired drone can jump for take-off
EPFL researchers have built a drone that can walk, hop, and jump into flight with the aid of birdlike legs, greatly expanding the range of potential environments accessible to unmanned aerial vehicles...
actu.epfl.ch
Jahir Argote-Gerald@jahirargote.bsky.social · 2y agoDiscover a decentralized, lightweight collaborative SLAM that lets tiny, $20 drones map unknown spaces with onboard sensors—no external infrastructure required! Scalable to hundreds of agents, it reduces cost & latency while achieving 30cm accuracy. Impressive step in swarm robotics! #SLAM #UWB #AI!
An updated intro to reinforcement learning by Kevin Murphy: arxiv.org/abs/2412.05265! Like their books, it covers a lot and is quite up to date with modern approaches. It also is pretty unique in coverage, I don't think a lot of this is synthesized anywhere else yet
Reinforcement Learning: An Overview
This manuscript gives a big-picture, up-to-date overview of the field of (deep) reinforcement learning and sequential decision making, covering value-based RL, policy-gradient methods, model-based met...
arxiv.org
📚🧵1/7 It is finally here!! Only one more week until the print release of our textbook “Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches” with @mitpress.bsky.social! What you get, why you should be interested and more, all below in a short 🧵👇
Three must read papers for PhD students. #scisky #PhD #science #research #academicsky 1. The importance of stupidity in scientific research Open Access journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
