[alife] CFP: Evolution of Physical Systems (EPS) workshop @ECAL 2015 (York, UK)

[Jean-Baptiste Mouret]

Dear all,

Some of you are likely to be interested in this workshop about Evolution in Physical Systems, at ECAL 2015.

We use the term Evolution of Physical Systems (EPS) to refer to evolutionary algorithms which occur entirely in real-world physical substrates rather than in simulation. The term encompasses both parallel Embodied Evolution (Watson et al., 2002), in which evolution is distributed across a population of robots, as well as Evolutionary Robotics (Floreano and Mondada, 1994) where evaluation is serialized on a single robot. Notable examples of EPS occur across a wide variety of systems, ranging from Robotics (Zykov et al., 2004)] to FPGAs (Thompson, 1996) to 3D printers (Rieffel and Sayles, 2010). Although EPS comes at a cost (the speed of the real world, unlike CPUs, does not follow Moore’s Law), by definition it avoids the “reality gap” imposed by simulation, and has produced novel and tangeable real-world results. Regardless of application or method, all implementations of EPS are bound by many of the same constraints and technical challenges.

The aim of this half-day single-track workshop is to bring together researchers who are currently involved in the Evolution of Physical Systems, as well as those interested in the technique, in order to share ideas and innovations. As the frontiers of artificial life move from the computer to the petri dish, the Evolution of Physical Systems offers to provide inroads into domains which are otherwise impossible to simulate.

The first three EPS Workshops at ALIFE13,  ECAL ’13, and ALIFE14 were tremendous successes. We hope to continue the tradition at ECAL ’15. We will have time for ~6 speakers, as well as an extended panel session on the promises and pitfalls of the Evolution of Physical Systems. In addition, this year we will also feature a poster session.

We invite authors to submit a 1-page abstract describing research or a review/discussion related to the Evolution of Physical Systems.

* Following the workshop, we will invite participants and attendees to submit to an upcoming special issue of Artificial Life Journal (MIT Press) devoted to the Evolution of Physical Systems. *

How to Submit: E-mail the workshop chair (rieffelj at union.edu) with your name, contact info, and a PDF containing your 1 page submission.

Dates
	• Submission Deadline: 18 May, 2015
	• Author Notification: 25 May, 2015

Organizers:
- John Rieffel, Union College, New York, USA
- Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
- Nicolas Bredeche, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
- Evert Haasdijk, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands

Best regards,
— Jean-Baptiste Mouret
http://pages.isir.upmc.fr/~mouret/