The Spiderino Swarm Robot at Research Days 2017

In Klagenfurt from July 10-12, 2017, the Lakeside Research Days were held in collaboration between the Lakeside Labs and the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. Researchers presented their work and discussed open issues in self-organization and swarm intelligence in cyber physical systems.

The Research Days included also laboratory sessions with training on swarm robotics platform. Midhat Jdeed from theAlpen-Adria-Universität gave a lab session about Spiderino, how to program and implement the basic functionalities such as walking, turning and lighting two LEDs using Arduino Studio. In addition, a program has been implemented using sensors distance to make a small swarm of Spiderinos search for the light source and follow it. The sensors employed in Spiderino are CNY70s, which can measure distances and detect obstacles based on the amount of reflected light from an obstacle. This method is prone to ambient light, but it can be also used to make the robots finding a light source.

In the lab session, the Research Days participants learned about the possibilities and programming interface of Spiderino and could implement their own first program hands on. By the end of the session we had a lab of swarming spiders.

More details about Research Days 2017 can be found on the Research Days'17 webpage.

If you want to learn more about the Spiderino swarm robot, check out this paper:

M. Jdeed, S. Zhevzhyk, F. Steinkellner, and W. Elmenreich. Spiderino - a low-cost robot for swarm research and educational purposes In Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES'17), Hamburg, Germany, June 2017.

Game of Trust: a Game about Game Theory

The game of trust is a game created by Nicky Case inspired by Robert Axelrod's 1984 book, "The Evolution of Cooperation" and his 1997 sequel, "The Complexity of Cooperation", and Robert D. Putnam's 2000 book on America's declining "social capital", Bowling Alone.

The game let's you play an iterated prisoner's dilemma. Do you know the prisoners' dilemma? Not sure about the payoffs? Have a look at Nicky Case's model for an easy to remember ruleset:

You have one choice. In front of you is a machine: if you put a coin in the machine, the other player gets three coins – and vice versa. You both can either choose to COOPERATE (put in coin), or CHEAT (don't put in coin).

Experience game theory with entertaining graphics by Nicky Case

Now visit the game page of the game of trust and have fun!