SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

CS 266: Biologically-inspired Distributed and Multi-agent Systems Prof. Radhika Nagpal Fall 2007

Course Description   Assignments and Guidelines   Schedule and Reading List   Paper Reviews   Project Milestones and Suggestions   Fall06   Staff  
SSR Swarm Simulator

Announcements

Final project papers, read the abstracts and papers here

Evolution Inspired Generation of Ant Foraging Algorithms, Nicolas Hoff, Amelia Sagoff, Stefan J. Wernli
Lessons from Regenerative Systems in Biology, Alex Shpunt and Seth Frey
Collective Construction: theoretical and evolutionary approaches, Andrei Munteanu, Thomas Carriero, Taro Narahara
Title: Dynamic Shape Formation, Zain Khalid and Vaidya Rajagopalan
ACO Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks, Jason Waterman and Atanu Chowdhury
Understanding Godsib, Rohan Murty
Lazy Calibration for Wireless Sensor Networks , Billy Lau and Michael Lyons

Course Description

Instructor: Prof. Radhika Nagpal (rad@eecs)
Class Time: Tues/Thurs 11:30-1 (note time change)
Location: MD 221
Teaching Fellows: Ian Rose (ianrose@eecs)
Office Hours: MD 238, Wed 12-12:30 (General); Wed 3-3:30 (Tues presenter); Wed 3:30-4 (Thurs presenter)

A colony of cells cooperates to form a multicellular organism under the direction of a common genetic program. A swarm of bees cooperates to construct a hive. Emerging technologies are making possible a new class of large-scale, embedded, distributed systems --- vast sensors networks for habitat monitoring and smart buildings, programmable materials with embedded sensors and actuators, swarms of tiny robots and shape-changing robots with thousands of modules, even genetically-engineered cells as new computational substrates. These examples raise a fundamental question for the organization and design of computing systems: How do we engineer robust behavior from the cooperation of vast numbers of unreliable parts? Biology hints that there may be significant power to be achieved from building things out of cheap, imprecise parts with limited life.

This class will survey the state of the art in bio-inspired approaches to designing robust collective behavior in different domains. A unifying theme amongst these domains is the desire to construct robust systems consisting of many individually unreliable nodes, that produce complex but predictable global behavior. We will focus on algorithms, methods for analysis, and programming paradigms for engineering self-organizing systems. Topics include: swarm intelligence and applications, amorphous computing and self-assembling materials/robots, immune and evolution inspired approaches, and theoretical approaches to global-to-local derivation. The class will be primarily based on discussions of research papers, along with a final project and assignments (see below).

Prerequisites:
This class is geared toward graduate students at all levels as well as advanced undergraduates. Students should have a familiarity with systems (e.g. operating systems CS 161 or computer networks CS 143) and algorithms/analysis (e.g. CS 124). Experience reading research papers is useful, background in biology not required.

Enrollment will be limited to 16 this year. Preference will be given to graduate students and upper-class undergraduates. Please make sure to come to the first class and fill out a class form.

Textbook:
There will be no required textbook this year. However, there are several excellent books on the topics in this course that are on reserve in the library. And we also have spare copies as part of our course library to lend out for preparing presentations and final projects.

Assignments:
This course will involve reading research papers, leading and participating in class discussions, and a final project. The grade will based on all three aspects (follow link at the top for more detail).

Staff

Radhika Nagpal (Lecturer)
rad at eecs harvard edu
Office: 235 Maxwell Dworkin
Phone number: 496-6434