Dr Roderich Gross

PhD, SMIEEE, MACM

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Senior Lecturer in Robotics and Computational Intelligence

Roderich Gross
Profile picture of Roderich Gross
r.gross@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Dr Roderich Gross
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Amy Johnson Building
Portobello Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
Profile

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Scientist at CSAIL, MIT, and an Executive Committee Member of Sheffield Robotics, where I lead the Enabling Technologies theme. I received a Ph.D. degree in engineering science in 2007 from Université libre de Bruxelles, and was a JSPS Fellow (Tokyo Institute of Technology), a Research Associate (University of Bristol), and a Marie Curie Fellow (EPFL & Unilever). My research interests are in robotics and artificial intelligence. I have made contributions to the coordination of robot swarms and reconfigurable robots, and invented a machine learning method called Turing Learning. I served as the General Chair of DARS 2016 and as an Editor of IROS 2015-18. Currently, I serve as an Associate Editor of Swarm Intelligence, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, and ICRA 2019.

Research interests
  • Swarm robotics, self-reconfigurable robots, multi-robot coordination, collaborative robots
  • Robotics software/tools (human-robot interaction interfaces, formal design tools, operating systems)
  • Machine learning for behavior inference (Turing Learning, generative adversarial networks)
  • Autonomous systems and decision making
  • Natural computing (swarm intelligence, evolutionary algorithms, artificial life)
Publications

Journal articles

Conference proceedings

  • Miyauchi G, Groß R & Chen C (2026) Human Perceptions of Warmth and Competence in Swarm Robot Behavior. Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp 196-200) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Argote-Gerald J, Miyauchi G, Trodden P & Groß R (2026) On the Benefits of Robot Platooning for Navigating Crowded Environments (pp 259-272) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Liu M, Deferme L, Van Eyck T, Yang F, Michiels S, Abadie A, Alvarado-Marin S, Maksimovic F, Miyauchi G, Jayakumar J , Talamali MS et al (2025) CapBot: Enabling Battery-Free Swarm Robotics. 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (pp 570-576), 19 May 2025 - 23 May 2025. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Talamali MS, Miyauchi G, Watteyne T, Couceiro MS & Gross R (2025) Ready, bid, go! On-demand delivery using fleets of drones with unknown, heterogeneous energy storage constraints. Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (pp 2015-2023). Detroit, Michigan, USA, 19 May 2025 - 19 May 2025. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miyauchi G, Talamali MS & Gross R (2024) A comparative study of energy replenishment strategies for robot swarms. Swarm Intelligence: 14th International Conference, ANTS 2024, Konstanz, Germany, October 9–11, 2024, Proceedings, Vol. LNCS 14987 (pp 3-15). Konstanz, Germany, 9 October 2024 - 9 October 2024. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Amorim Marques JV, Lorente M-T & Gross R (2024) Multi-robot systems research: a data-driven trend analysis. Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. DARS 22, Vol. 28 (pp 537-549). Montbéliard, France, 28 November 2022 - 28 November 2022. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miyauchi G, Lopes YK & Gross R (2023) Sharing the control of robot swarms among multiple human operators: a user study. 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) Proceedings (pp 8847-8853). Detroit, Michigan, USA, 1 October 2023 - 1 October 2023. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Gilmour JWG, Bray E & Gross R (2023) Towards heterogeneous modular robotic systems for industrial applications. Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS'23). Cambridge, UK, 13 September 2023 - 13 September 2023. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Kellett J, Bray E & Gross R (2023) Angled cantilever construction by force-aware robotic swarms. Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS'23). Cambridge, UK, 13 September 2023 - 13 September 2023. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miyauchi G, Talamali MS, Liu M, Deferme L, Van Eyck T, Michiels S, Jayakumar J, Abadie A, Fedrecheski G, Balbi M , Alvarado-Marin S et al () Energy replenishment strategies for robot swarms. 1st German Robotics Conference (GRC 2025). Nuremberg, Germany, 13 March 2025 - 13 March 2025. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miyauchi G, Talamali MS, Millard AG, Lopes YK & Gross R () Multi-human multi-robot interaction: cooperation leveraging a robot swarm as a shared resource. 1st German Robotics Conference (GRC 2025). Nuremberg, Germany, 13 March 2025 - 13 March 2025. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download

Preprints

Grants
  • Horizon Europe OpenSwarm: Orchestration and Programming ENergy-aware and collaborative Swarms With AI-powered Reliable Methods, £463,699, from 01/01/2023
  • EPSRC 'EPSRC Core Capital', £104,196, from 22/01/2020
  • DSTL 'DSTL Multi Robot Systems', £98.781, from 30/10/2019
  • Industry Research/Consultancy, 'Modular robotics', from 24/03/2017
  • EPSRC 'Robotics Capital Equipment' £462,075, 01/10/2016 - 31/03/2017
  • EPSRC ‘Human-Machine Cooperation in Robotics and Autonomous Systems’, £330,333.80 (App No.138565) 01/07/2013 – 30/09/2014
  • ESPRC ‘Evo-Bots’, £100,905 (App No. 135020) 01/07/2013 – 31/12/2014
  • EU FP7 'Evolving Robots', £37,125 (PERG07-GA-2010-267354) 01/09/2010 - 31/08/2013
  • Unilever Research ‘Unilever Research Portsunlight’, £62,414 (App No. 132096) 01/11/2011 – 31/07/2012
Teaching activities
  • ACS6501 Foundations of Robotics
Professional activities and memberships
  • General Chair: DARS 2016 (13th Int Symp on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems)
  • Chair, IEEE CIS Task Force on Swarm Intelligence (2016-2017)
  • Editor, IROS 2019 - 2015 (IEEE/RSJ Int Conf on Intelligent Robots and Systems)
  • Associate Editor: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (from 2015)
  • Associate Editor: IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine (from 2015)
  • Associate Editor: Swarm Intelligence (from 2013)
  • Associate Editor: ICRA 2020-2019, 2015 - 2012 (IEEE Int Conf on Robotics and Automation)
  • Associate Editor: IROS, 2014 - 2012 (IEEE/RSJ Int Conf on Intelligent Robots and Systems)
  • Program Co-Chair: GECCO 2018 (Swarm Intelligence Track)
  • Program Co-Chair: AAMAS 2016 (Robotics Track)
  • Program Co-Chair: ANTS 2012 (8th Int Conf on Swarm Intelligence)
  • Program Co-Chair: TAROS 2011 (12th Conf Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems)
  • Publication Chair: ANTS 2010 (7th Int Conf on Swarm Intelligence)
  • Best/Outstanding Associate Editors: 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
  • Member of the Editorial Board: Frontiers in Robotics & AI
  • Part Editor: Springer Handbook of Computational Intelligence
  • Guest Editor: Distributed Robotics special issue (Auton Robots, 2018)
  • Guest Editor: Swarm Robotics special issue (Neural Comput & Appl, 2010)
  • Guest Editor: TAROS 2011 special issue (Robot Auton Syst)
  • Guest Editor: ANTS 2010 and ANTS 2012 special issues (Swarm Intell)
  • Grant Reviewer for national funding bodies (EU, Canada, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Austria)
  • Reviewer (e.g., Royal Soc Interface, IEEE Trans Robot, Int J Robot Res, IEEE Trans Evol Compt, PLoS ONE)
  • SPC Member: AAMAS 2018
  • PC Member: RSS 2020, NeurIPS 2020, IJCAI 2020, AAMAS 2020, GECCO 2020 

Invited talks (selected)

  • "Advances in distributed robotics and Turing Learning", SSR, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (2018)
  • "Robots, swarms and Turing learning", Plenary talk at 27th ERNSI Workshop (European Research Network on System Identification), Cambridge, UK (2018)
  • "Robots, swarms and Turing learning", Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Konstanz, Germany (2018)
  • "Less is more? Defining your building blocks", Dagstuhl seminar on Algorithmic Foundations of Programmable Matter, Germany (2018)
  • "Less is more? Controlling swarms and Turing learning", Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA) Workshop, UCL, UK (2018)
  • "Less is more? Controlling swarms and Turing learning", Conference on Collective Robotics, International Centre for Theoretical Physics/UNESCO, Italy (2018) 
  • "Less is more? New approaches for swarm control and inference", Janelia Conference on Distributed, Collective Computation in Biological and Artificial Systems, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA (2018)
  • "Swarms - design, interaction and learning", University of Southampton, UK (2017)
  • "Advances in massively distributed robotics and machine learning", ULB, Brussels, Belgium (2017)
  • "Bandits, swarms, and Turing Learning", University of Bristol, UK (2017)
  • "Less is more? New approaches for swarm control and inference", 2016 CCS Workshop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2016)
  • "Controlling swarms of robots without computation", JSPS EPSRC UK - Japan Workshop on Soft Robotics, University of Cambridge, UK (2016)
  • "Swarm robotics", IEEE RAS Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems, NUS, Singapore (2016)
  • "Less is more? New approaches for swarm control and inference", University of Liverpool, UK (2016)
  • "Less is more? New approaches for swarm control and inference", NIPS 2016 Workshop, Montreal, Canada (2015)
  • "Swarm robotics: Minimalism, learning and evolution" - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2015)
  • "Controlling robot swarms - from theory to practice - and evolution beyond control", EPFL, Switzerland (2015)
  • "Swarm robotics - the future of healthcare?", RE.WORK Future Tech Summit, London, UK (2015)
  • "Swarm robotics: Minimalism, learning and evolution" - ULB, Belgium (2014)
  • "Swarm robotics: Minimalism, learning and evolution" - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (2014)
  • "Is less more? Design principles for massively distributed robotic systems" - The Royal Society UK-Russia Frontiers of Science meeting, Kazan, Russia (2013)
  • "Towards distributed autonomous robotic systems," CSAIL, MIT, USA (2012)
  • "Towards autonomous robotic systems," Transducers Science and Technology Group, Univ. of Twente, The Netherlands (2011)
  • "From natural swarms to swarms of robots," Thrilling Wonder Stories 3, Architectural Association London, UK (2011)
  • "Self-assembly at the macroscopic scale," Self-Assembly on all Scales workshop, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany (2011)
  • "Autonomous mobile systems inspired by nature," Institute of Computer Science, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany (2009)
  • "Autonomous robotic systems inspired by nature," Fakultaet fuer Informatik, Univ. of Karlsruhe, Germany (2009)
  • "Physical interactions in multi-robot systems," Faculty of EE & IT, Technical Univ. of Munich, Germany (2009)
  • "Self-assembling robots: Physical interactions in collective robotics," IPVS, Univ. of Stuttgart, Germany (2008)
  • "What properties are required for individuals that work in groups or teams?," IPAB, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK (2007)
  • "Teamwork in colonies of insect-like robots," Bristol Robotics Laboratory, UK (2007)
  • "Self-assembly and its use in swarm-bot," Murata Lab, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (2005)
  • "Group transport by a self-assembling robotic system," Kosuge and Wang Lab, Tohoku Univ., Japan (2005)
  • "Swarm-bots: A self-assembling robotic system," Fukuda Lab, Nagoya Univ., Japan (2005)