Icosystem is awarded DARPA contract to develop control strategies 
for robotic swarms  

Cambridge, MA - 21 April 2003

Icosystem Corporation has been awarded a contract from the Defense 
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to apply principles of 
swarm intelligence to the control of robotic swarms.  

The project, titled "Design of Control Strategies for Swarms of 
Unmanned Ground Vehicles," proposes to develop strategies to control 
swarms of robots carrying out indoor navigation and reconnaissance 
tasks. The underlying research goal of this project is to address a 
number of fundamental questions about swarm control.  

"Recent technological advances in robotics, coupled with the 
decreasing cost of robotic platforms, makes the deployment of large 
robot teams a near-term possibility. However, there is little research 
that can help us understand how to control a team of robots in a way 
that is efficient and effective" said Paolo Gaudiano, Icosystem's VP 
of Technology and co-Principal Investigator on this project. "We will 
be addressing some fundamental questions about control strategies for 
robotic swarms. But more importantly, we will develop performance 
metrics that will make it possible to evaluate if and when it makes 
sense to use robotic swarms, and which control strategies are best 
suited to solve specific problems."  

"This is a great opportunity to apply Icosystem's world-class expertise 
in swarm intelligence to real-world problems with immediate, practical 
applications" said Eric Bonabeau, Icosystem's founder and Chief 
Scientific Officer, co-PI on this project. "Robotic swarms could be 
immensely helpful for a variety of tasks, especially for operations 
in hazardous or inhospitable environments. For example, robot teams 
could be used in search-and-rescue missions of the type that was 
needed for the World Trade Center, or they could be applied in space, 
where modular, distributed robots can be deployed to build structures 
and perform maintenance on the space station and other platforms."  

About Icosystem Corporation I cosystem Corporation develops strategies 
and technologies that drive individual businesses or whole sectors to 
a phase transition in performance and onto the next level. From its 
offices in Cambridge, MA, Icosystem combines world-class capabilities 
in complexity science, dynamic modeling and evolutionary computation 
with its clients' and partners' sector expertise - discovering 
opportunities for significant improvements to existing businesses 
and exploring the potential for new ones.  

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed 
in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily 
reflect the views of DARPA or the Department of Interior - National 
Business Center (DOI-NBC).  

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Source: Icosystem - http://icosystem.com/releases/DARPA_210403.htm


Cheers, Steve..

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