What's the conference about?
A new paradigm in computing is to take many simple autonomous objects or agents and let them jointly perform a complex task, without having the need for centralized control. In this paradigm, these simple objects interact locally with their environment using simple rules. An important inspiration for this model is nature itself, where many such systems can be found. Applications include optimization algorithms, communications networks, scheduling and decision making, supply-chain management, and robotics. There are many disciplines involved in making such systems work: from artificial intelligence to energy aware systems. Often these disciplines have their own field of focus, have their own conferences, or only deal with specialized subproblems (e.g. swarm intelligence, biologically inspired computation, sensor networks).
