Presumably you are aware of the work of Rolf Pfeiffer and co in Zurich,
who are using biological paradigms for the design of interacting robots
(he's probably more interested in sensing systems).  There was a
workshop in Japan organised by him and Fumio Hara which will eventually
result in a book "MorphoFunctional Machines" - it must be ready soon!! -
and more recently a workshop at UWE, Bristol, co-sponsored by the HP
labs, celebrating the work of W Grey Walter as the first person to work
on truly interactive robots.  Contact Bob Damper at Southampton Uni for
more information.  I expect he'll have volumes of the Proceedings still
available, and some papers will be published in the Royal Society journals.

A van Lieburg wrote:
>
> Arthur and others,
>
> First of all, I'm very pleased with all of your comments. The background
> of my interest in swarming and social insects is that I'm currently
> involved in some projects in which the focus is on "car-to-car"
> communication and "smart" road concepts. With this in mind I was
> wondering how ants and in some extent bees/wasps do deal with their
> "traffic" problems. I'm aware that ants have several very effective
> solutions for pretty tough problems (routing, cooperation etc). And I
> know that bees, besides their astonishing navigation and communication
> skills, do use some kind of "dominance-index" to solve (traffic)
> conflicts within their hives. While thinking about the massive numbers
> of individuals crawling around the tunnels of their nests I'm wondering
> what mechanisms might be found to keep such a organisation effective.
>
> Besides the work above, we started some research into the concepts of
> self-organisation and the potential technological/industrial
> applications - i.e. smart (large scale) sensor networks,
> multi-agent/robot systems, self-repairing systems etc. - actually we are
> trying to convince our collegaes(!) and (industrial) partners about the
> potential benefits of a "biological inspired" approach - and so any
> ideas about illustrative applications are very welcome
>
> regards,
>
>         Thonie van Lieburg, M.Sc.
>         TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory
>         group Command&Control
>         Netherlands
>         www.tno.nl,[log in to unmask]
>
> Arthur Brandwood wrote:
> >
> > Hi Thonie,
> >
> > Welcome to the list!
> >
> > Have a look at the work of Mandyam Srinivasan at Australian National
> > University.  See
> > http://biology.anu.edu.au/rsbsweb/profiles/srini.shtml  His group has
> > done a lot of work on bee flight from a range of aspects, particularly
> > vision and swarming behaviour.
> >
> > They are also working on a range of biomimetic applications of their
> > work including robotic vision and flight control systems for pilotless
> > aircraft including consideration of insect foraging strategies and
> > application to autonomous "foraging" behaviour for multiple vehicles
> > in aerial surveillance.
> >
> > Arthur Brandwood
> >
> > At 08:46 PM 6/02/2003, you wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > Hopefully I pickecd the right list - I'm research engineer who's
> > > background is in theorectical biology and bioinformatics. I'm very
> > > interested in what's sometimes called "biological inspired
> > > technologies"
> > > and I'm trying to use biological principles as main inspiration
> > > while
> > > tackling technological challenges (related to areas like crisis
> > > management, traffic management, decision support,"intelligent"
> > > systems,
> > > etc). Currently we are working on the application of
> > > self-organisation
> > > concepts in (at least) the context of traffic management. One aspect
> > > we've looked at is swarm-intelligence and we are excited about
> > > possible
> > > applications. Besides that I'm looking for good references about
> > > colony
> > > behavior of social insects escpecially related to in-hive behavior
> > > (I'm
> > > hoping to find possible clues here about natural "traffic-jams").
> > > Any
> > > help or hints are greatly appreciated!!
> > >
> > >
> > > regards,
> > >
> > >         Thonie van Lieburg, M.Sc.
> > >         TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory
> > >         group Command&Control
> > >         Netherlands
> > >         www.tno.nl,[log in to unmask]
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Arthur Brandwood
> > Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering
> > UNSW  Sydney Australia 2052
> > [log in to unmask]
> > Tel/Fax: +61 (0)2 6291 3850
> > Mobile:  +61 (0)411 285 207

--
Julian FV Vincent                                               [log in to unmask]
Professor of Biomimetics                                        office 01225 386596
Centre for Biomimetics & Natural Technologies   mobile 07941 933901
Dept of Mechanical Engineering                          fax    01225 386928
The University
BATH  BA2  7AY

http://www.bath.ac.uk/Departments/Eng/biomimetics/

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