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 👾🫟🦠

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!

🇨🇴 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.

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!

🐝 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.

🚨 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

Happy Friday! Here is a shiny new update for you. 🎊🎊 Our LaTex template just dropped! 🎊🎊 You can find it at 2025.alife.org This template applies for Full Papers (≤ 8pages) & Summaries (≤ 3 pages) Please prepare submissions using the template for a smooth submission process. #ALIFE #ALIFE2025

Delighted to announce that Dr Mike Mangan, VP Research at Opteran ltd, will give a plenary "Opteran: Reverse engineering insect brains to create minds for machines" at Living Machines 2025, Sheffield this July. CfP open till April 14th livingmachinesconference.eu/2025/plenary... @opteran.bsky.social

Super exciting news! 🚀 The Heat & Cognition ManyLabs project has just started here at the CASCB @uni-konstanz.de ! If you want to be part of this global study, check out the links below! ⬇️

Kicking off the UK Multi-Agent Systems Symposium 2025 (UK-MAS) by The Alan Turing Institute! Opening with @icouzin.bsky.social from @cbehav.bsky.social on "The Geometry of Collective Multi-Agent Decision Making." Exciting day of #collective #behavior across scales. 👾🤖🦠🦈🖥️🏦

Our next Collective Behaviour Seminar #CollBehavSeminar is by @sercansayin.bsky.social from @uni-konstanz.de on 18th March 2025, @2pm UK time. Talks are 15 minutes long, with 15 minutes of questions. Subscribe to lnkd.in/eCWT2dvF to keep up to date and for information on our seminars.

CapBot the robot platform for #swarm #robotics without a battery (instead: capacitor array) charged in 16 seconds, autonomy for ~50 min work by Mengyao Liu (KU Leuven) et al. within project OpenSwarm great idea! @roderichgross.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnik...

PhD🧑‍🎓 🚢 Opportunity! #UniversityofBath is inviting applications for a funded PhD project exploring: How Generative AI can Create Tipping Points for Psychological and Behavioural Change. APPLICATIONS CLOSE: 27th April 2025 START DATE: Sept 2025 Enquiries should be directed to: lnkd.in/eEgnmCW7

It was great to have you around! Awesome things happening in Konstanz :)

There's no question that our understanding of evolution has changed dramatically over time. More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that evolution itself has changed too. Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @kevinlala.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/the-developm...

Continuing the recruitment trend! Our lab has 2 (!) open postdoc positions🥳 We're looking for creative and curious scientists to lead new projects: one on deep-sea biological rhythms and another on the evolution of biological communication🐚🦗🦋🐙🦉 If you know someone who'd be a good fit, please share!

Anyone can now freely access the talks from the Cultural Evolution Conference Durham 2024 - perfect for first-time viewing or a rewatch! underline.io/events/456/l...

Fully-funded PhD position on optimal network design in ant nests and slime mould, which will be split between the University of Bristol (UK) and Macquarie University (Australia) - application deadline: Friday 21st March. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Tomorrow!

Scientists use VR + lab + field study to rewrite the rules of locust swarming 🦗🦗 Latest @science.org from first author @sercansayin.bsky.social and #Konstanz team ⬇️ @einatcouzin.bsky.social @icouzin.bsky.social @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This was an awesome collaboration with Mario di Bernardo's lab and builds on the foundational development of the #dome with @sabinehauert.bsky.social. Also, wouldn't have been possible without support from the @ukri.org and @royalsociety.org. @bristolbiodesign.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social

Today's #robotics lecture: selective attention. Now that I've posted this, I should get back to what I was working on before... ...if only I could remember what that was. youtu.be/BKzOfR9zWCc

‼️FYI. The deadline for paper contributions is May 4th 2025*. Our submission platform will open shortly. Note: This year looks a bit different to previous years. We'll be inviting 3 types of contributions: Full papers (3-8 pages) Summaries (2 pages) ✨️new!✨️ Late Breaking Abstracts (2 pages)* 👇

@livingmachinesconf.bsky.social 📍University of Sheffield, The Diamond 📅 15-18 July The conf. themes encompasses biomimetic methods for manufacture, repair, and recycling inspired by natural processes such as reproduction,digestion,morphogenesis, and metamorphosis. livingmachinesconference.eu/2025/

Just found out I had a couple of papers accepted to the IEEE #ALife conference, which means it's time for my first Bluetorial 🧪! The first paper is about evolutionary algorithms for swarm robotics and was led by my PhD student, Max Foreback, in collaboration with @cliffbohm.bsky.social 1/n

Excited to have been admitted into this competitive programme! Looking forward to meeting the #GW4Crucible 2025 cohort and getting started on some great collaborations! Early career researchers from diverse disciplines exploring "Creative Societies and Cultures, Cultural and Public Good?" 🎭🏥💰🏛️🌍🎓🤖🧠

🎉 Excited to announce that the 14th Living Machines International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems will be hosted in Sheffield, UK, in July 2025! 📢 Got groundbreaking paper/demo/workshop to submit? 🗓️ Submission deadline: 30th March 2025 🔗 More details: lnkd.in/e2AwQx-8

1/3 We have released our #multi-robot #exploration #planner for #space applications! Designed for complex unconstrained environments, it mixes a local grid with a global graph planner, with the global graphs being synchronised when robots are in comms range. #field #robotics #autonomous #systems

Pls share: Konstanz School of Collective behavior from 21st July - 8th August. Application deadline: April, 15. An amazing line up of speakers spanning all aspects of collective behavior . For info: www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/kscb/ @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

New paper out in which I, @sabinehauert.bsky.social, Matimba Swarma & Jonathan Ives take a deep dive into responsible swarm robotics. We set out for the first time a framework for the ethical governance of real-world swarms royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #AIethics #robotethics #robot

Our paper, "Automatic design of stigmergy-based behaviours for robot swarms," has been selected for the 2024 Editor's Choice collection of @commseng.bsky.social (@natureportfolio.bsky.social)! 📄 The paper: nature.com/articles/s44... 🌟 The Editor's Choice collection: nature.com/articles/s44...