Since its inception in 1998, ANTS has been a highly selective, single-track meeting that provided a forum for discussing advances in the field of swarm intelligence. It solicits submissions presenting significant, original research from researchers and practitioners of any area related to swarm intelligence.
Swarm intelligence is an interdisciplinary and rapidly evolving field, rooted in the study of self-organizing processes in both natural and artificial systems. Researchers from disciplines ranging from ethology to statistical physics have developed models that explain collective phenomena, such as decision-making in social insect colonies and collective movements in human crowds. Swarm-inspired algorithms and methods have proven effective in solving complex optimization problems and creating multi-robot and networked systems of unparalleled resilience, adaptability and scalability. Applications of swarm intelligence continue to grow and become increasingly critical for addressing societal challenges such as environmental sustainability, food security, health, and global conflicts.
The 2026 edition’s theme is "reaching beyond - swarm intelligence across systems, disciplines, and communities". The conference seeks to encourage new perspectives, help bridge traditional boundaries and enable open debate on what could be ambitious, exploratory, and groundbreaking endeavors to embark on.
Call for Papers
The Proceedings are published by Springer-Nature in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS series.
The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated to ANTS 2026 that will contain extended versions of selected research works presented at the conference.
All accepted submissions will be listed here!
For accommodation we suggest to book directly at a hotel of your choice. Google Maps can be used to check public transport options to the venue.
We can offer you a discounted rate at the Welcome Hotel using this link.
| Hotel | Hotel Rating | Walking time | Website |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome Hotel Darmstadt City Center | ★★★★ | 3 min | welcome-hotels.com |
| THE Darmstadt | ★★★ | 13 min | thehotelexperience.de |
| Felix Hotel Darmstadt | - | 14 min | felix-hotels.de |
| Maritim Hotel Darmstadt | ◉◉◉◉ | 25 min | maritim.de |
| IntercityHotel Darmstadt | ◉◉◉◉ | 28 min | hrewards.com |
| Holiday Inn Express Darmstadt (by IHG) | ★★★ | 34 min | ihg.com |
| Hotel | Distance to venue | Walking time | Website |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best Western Hotel Darmstadt Mitte | ★★★ | 10 min | bestwestern.de |
| Limehome Darmstadt | - | 10 min | limehome.com |
| Hotel Atlanta | ★★★ | 16 min | hotel-atlanta-darmstadt.de |
| H+ Hotel Darmstadt | - | 24 min | h-hotels.com | Dormero Hotel Darmstadt | ◉◉◉◉ | 24 min | dormero.de |
| Plaza Premium Darmstadt | ◉◉◉◉ | 28 min | plazahotels.de |
| Moxy Darmstadt | ◉◉◉ | 29 min | marriott.com |
| B&B Hotel Darmstadt | ◉◉◉ | 30 min | hotel-bb.com |
| Holiday Inn Express Darmstadt (by IHG) | ★★★ | 34 min | ihg.com |
| greet Hotel Darmstadt (Accor) | ★★★ | 40 min | all.accor.com |
Swarms of small drones are promising for many applications, such as search-and-rescue, greenhouse monitoring, or keeping track of stock in warehouses. Since they are small, they can fly in narrow areas. Moreover, their light weight makes them very safe for flight around humans. However, making such tiny drones fly completely by themselves is an enormous challenge. Most approaches to Artificial Intelligence for robotics have been designed with self-driving cars or other large robots in mind – and these are able to carry many sensors and ample processing. In my talk, I will argue that a different approach is necessary for achieving autonomous flight with tiny drones. In particular, I will discuss how we can draw inspiration from flying insects, and endow our drones with similar intelligence. Examples include the fully autonomous “DelFly Explorer”, a 20-gram flapping wing drone, and swarms of CrazyFlie quadrotors of 30 grams able to explore unknown environments and finding gas leaks. Moreover, I will discuss the promises of novel neuromorphic sensing and processing technologies, illustrating this with recent experiments from our lab.
Guido de Croon received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Currently, he is Full Professor at the Micro Air Vehicle lab (MAVLab) of Delft University of Technology. Furthermore, he is editor-in-chief of the Nature portfolio journal of Robotics. His research interest lies with computationally efficient, bio-inspired algorithms for autonomous, light-weight flying robots, with an emphasis on computer vision. His work has included fully autonomous flight of the 20-gram flapping wing drone "DelFly Explorer" and a swarm of tiny, 30-gram nano-copters able to explore unknown environments and localize gas leaks. Moreover, his group has made several advances in energy-efficient, low-latency neuromorphic sensing and processing for autonomous drones. Finally, his work has generated various new hypotheses on biological intelligence, including how honeybees actively evaluate distances with optical flow and how flying insects can estimate their flight attitude without using accelerometers.
The growing ability to synthesize colloidal nanoparticles of arbitrary shape and interaction anisotropy creates the potential for realizing active complex particle systems with emergent swarm-like behavior that mimics that of microrobotic assemblies and biological systems such as unicellular organisms and tissues. In this talk, we discuss the rise of colloidal robotics and present a complex particle system we call “flexicles” – deformable, artificial cellular superstructures composed of active particles encapsulated by a flexible membrane. We investigate the behavior of single-, multi- and many-flexicle systems, demonstrating how shape deformability of model flexicles gives rise to a diversity of swarming behavior. We show how flexicles are able to navigate through complex environments, accomplish simple tasks, and more. Our findings demonstrate a new, experimentally realizable class of complex particle systems capable of emergent swarm-like behaviors and robotic function.
Sharon C. Glotzer is the John Werner Cahn Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and the Stuart Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also holds faculty appointments in Materials Science & Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, and Macromolecular Science and Engineering, and is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK. Her research on computational assembly science and engineering aims toward the predictive design of colloidal and soft matter, with emphasis on complex particles and particle systems. Using simulation, geometrical concepts, and statistical mechanics, her research group seeks to understand the complex behavior emerging from simple rules and forces and to use that knowledge to design new classes of materials. Her work includes control of spatiotemporal organization in soft matter, discovery of one-dimensional dynamical structures in dense atomic, molecular and particulate fluids, and the discovery of high entropy colloidal crystals and quasicrystals for which she introduced the notion of entropic bonding. Glotzer’s “patchy particle” framework for designing and rationalizing assemblies of nanoparticles has been guiding experiments for two decades. Recently, her group introduced the “flexicle” as a conceptual platform for colloidal robotics. Glotzer’s group also develops and disseminates powerful open-source software, including the particle simulation toolkit HOOMD-blue.
Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes is Full Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Zaragoza and senior researcher at the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), where he leads the Group of Theoretical and Applied Modeling (GoThAM Lab). His research is grounded in Statistical and Nonlinear Physics, with a central focus on Network Science and on how macroscopic collective phenomena emerge from microscopic interaction rules. Gómez-Gardeñes has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the structure and dynamics of complex systems, particularly in congestion phenomena in traffic routing, synchronization transitions, multilayer network dynamics, and evolutionary game theory. A unifying theme of his work is the analysis of how structural organization constraints and shapes functional behavior. His research has received broad international recognition, especially for applications to real-world problems, including large-scale, data-driven modeling of epidemic spreading and the study of cooperation and cultural accumulation in real populations. Methodologically, his work combines analytical approaches, high-performance numerical simulations, and empirical data analysis, allowing him to connect theoretical models with operational tools for realistic scenarios. This integrative perspective is reflected in a prolific publication record in leading journals and a citation impact that positions him as a reference figure in the international complex systems community.
Thomas Watteyne is an insatiable enthusiast of low-power wireless technologies. He holds a Senior Research Director position at Inria in Paris, where he leads the AIO research team that designs, models and builds networking solutions based on a variety of Internet-of-Things (IoT) standards. He is Wireless System Architect at Analog Devices, the undisputed leader in supplying low power wireless mesh networking solutions for critical applications for industrial and beyond. Since 2023, Thomas is the scientific coordinator of the Horizon Europe OpenSwarm project. In 2019, he co-founded Wattson Elements, the company that develops the award-winning Falco marina management solution. Between 2013 and 2022, Thomas co-chaired the IETF 6TiSCH working group to standardize how to use IEEE802.15.4e TSCH in IPv6-enabled mesh networks. He was a postdoctoral research lead in Prof. Kristofer Pister’s team at the University of California, Berkeley. He founded and co-leads Berkeley’s OpenWSN project, an open-source initiative to promote the use of fully standards-based protocol stacks for the IoT. Between 2005 and 2008, he was a research engineer at France Telecom, Orange Labs. He holds a PhD in Computer Science (2008), an MSc in Networking (2005) and an MEng in Telecommunications (2005) from INSA Lyon, France. He is a Senior member of IEEE. He is fluent in 4 languages.
Liam Young is a designer, director and BAFTA nominated producer renowned for his innovative work at the intersection of design, fiction, and futures. Described by the BBC as ‘the man designing our futures’, his visionary films and speculative worlds are both extraordinary images of tomorrow and urgent examinations of the environmental questions facing us today. As a worldbuilder he visualizes the cities, spaces and props of our imaginary futures for the film and television industry and with his own films he has premiered with platforms ranging from Channel 4, Apple+, SxSW, Tribeca, the New York Metropolitan Museum, The Royal Academy, Venice Biennale, the BBC and the Guardian. His films have been collected internationally by museums such as MoMA New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, SF MoMA, The Smithsonian, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and M Plus Hong Kong and has been acclaimed in both mainstream and design media including features with TED, Wired, New Scientist, Arte, Canal+, Time magazine and many more. His film work is informed by his academic research and has held guest professorships at Princeton University, MIT, and Cambridge and now runs the ground breaking Masters in Fiction and Entertainment at SCI Arc in Los Angeles. He has published several books including the recent Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post Anthropocene and Planet City, a story of a fictional city for the entire population of the earth.
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| Category | Price |
|---|---|
| early bird (till 20 Feb) | 550€ |
| normal (till 1 May) | 650€ |
| late (till 7 June) | 725€ |
| on-site | 800€ |
The conference fee includes:
Continuing with a tradition started at
Supplementary video files will be peer-reviewed alongside the regular submissions they complement. Up to four Best Video Awards (EUR 250 each) sponsored by Springer Nature will recognize outstanding submissions.
Submissions may be a maximum of 11 pages, excluding references, when typeset in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) LaTeX template. Submissions should be a minimum of 7 full pages.
This strict page limit includes figures, tables, and all supplementary sections (e.g., Acknowledgements). The only exclusion from the page limit is the reference list, which should be of any length suitable to adequately position the paper with respect to the state of the art.
Papers should be prepared in English, in the Springer LNCS LaTeX style, using the default font and font size. Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings template for LaTeX, for the preparation of their papers. Please download the Proceedings (LNCS) LaTex template package (zip, 318 kB) and authors' guidelines (pdf, 244 kB) directly from the Springer website.
All submissions will undergo single-blind peer review, that is, they should include author names and affiliations.
Submissions that do not respect these guidelines will not be considered.
Note: Authors may find it convenient that Springer LNCS LaTex templates are available in Overleaf.
The initial submission must be in PDF format.
All submissions must comply with Springer Nature’s Book Authors’ Code of Conduct.
Please note that in the camera-ready phase, authors of accepted papers will need to submit both a compiled PDF and all source files (including LaTeX files and figures).
The camera-ready phase will have more detailed formatting requirements than the initial submission phase.
Springer offers authors the option of including videos in their proceedings papers. You may (optionally) upload a supplementary video file (only MP4 format, maximum duration of 180 seconds, maximum file size of 50 MB, resolution 16:9). Please note that a video that was NOT submitted with the initial submission of an ANTS paper, will NOT be accepted at a later date. Authors must not violate privacy and confidentiality rules and, as always, permission must be sought for use of third-party content.
The paper submission system closes at 23:59:59 (AoE) on 20 November 2025.
Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed on the basis of relevance, originality, technical quality, significance, and presentation quality (see Review Form). If a submission is not accepted as a full length paper, it may still be accepted either as a short paper or as an extended abstract. In such cases, authors will be asked to reduce the length of the submission accordingly. Authors of all accepted papers will be asked to execute revisions, based on the reviewers’ comments.
Accepted papers are to be revised and submitted as a camera-ready version. Reviewers’ comments should be taken into account and should guide appropriate revisions.
By submitting a camera-ready paper, the author(s) agree that at least one author will attend the conference and give a presentation of the paper. At least one author must be registered by the deadline for camera-ready submissions.
Camera-ready submission deadline: February 13, 2026, 23:59:59 (AoE).
Papers must be prepared using the LNCS Springer LaTeX template provided by Springer and must follow the LNCS default formatting (font, font size, margins, and spacing). Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines when formatting their paper.
The LaTeX class and reference style files included in the template:
llncs.clssplncs04.bstare already correctly configured and must not be modified under any circumstances.
These page limits include figures, tables, and all supplementary sections (e.g. Acknowledgements). The only exclusion from these page limits is the reference list, which should have an appropriate length with respect to the state of the art.
All page limits refer to papers prepared using the LNCS Springer LaTeX template.
Authors should ensure that their manuscript respects the following rules.
The following LNCS template options are mandatory.
The running header must be enabled. This is done by starting the document with:
\documentclass[runningheads]{llncs}In the \authorrunning{} field:
If the paper title is too long for the running header, specify a shortened version using:
\titlerunning{Abbreviated paper title}\newline in the title\orcidID{} within the \author{} fieldAffiliations must include:
Do not include street addresses or ZIP/postal codes.
The corresponding author’s email address is mandatory.
After the \institute{} entries, include an \index{} entry for each author, giving the surname, followed by the full first name(s). For example:
\index{SurnameAuthor1, FirstnameAuthor1}\index{SurnameAuthor2, FirstnameAuthor2}\index{SurnameAuthor3, FirstnameAuthor3}For contributions accepted as Extended Abstracts:
Do not add formatting modifications to the main document (.tex) to override the template defaults (e.g. margins, line spacing, or font sizes). In particular:
\vspace{}, \\*[0pt])subcaption package, as it overrides the default caption formatting in the template).During the final preparation of the proceedings, Springer will recompile all papers using their original LNCS class files. Any formatting modifications that do not comply with the template may be removed, potentially affecting the paper length. Papers that do not compile correctly or do not follow the required format cannot be included in the proceedings.
Figures should be provided in their original vector format (.pdf, .eps) wherever applicable. If raster graphics are used (.png, .jpeg, .tiff, .bmp), they must be high resolution at the final printed size:
Although figures in the digital proceedings will appear in full color, the printed proceedings will be produced in grayscale. Authors must ensure that all figures remain clearly legible when printed in grayscale.
References must be formatted using the LNCS reference style splncs04.bst. In-text citations appear as numbers, and the numbered reference list is ordered alphabetically.
Ensure your manuscript includes the following lines (uncommented) in the appropriate place:
\bibliographystyle{splncs04}\bibliography{mybibliography}Authors must not change the bibliography style.
Authors must create their own .bib file and populate it with their references. By default, the template uses mybibliography.bib; authors should either name their file mybibliography.bib or update the filename in the \bibliography{...} command accordingly, while keeping the bibliography style unchanged.
The .bbl file must be generated and included in the camera-ready submission archive.
Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. In addition, the corresponding author, acting on behalf of all authors, must complete and sign the Consent-to-Publish form.
Once the camera-ready files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to the authorship of the papers can no longer be made.
Before proceeding with submission, authors must complete the Camera-Ready Author Checklist. The checklist serves as a self-verification that all formatting, file, and submission requirements have been satisfied. The completed checklist must be submitted as a PDF and included in the camera-ready submission archive.
Failure to complete and submit the checklist may result in exclusion from the conference proceedings.
Upload the video as part of your camera-ready submission archive. File: MP4 only; max duration: 180 seconds; max size: 50 MB; format: 16:9. Authors must not violate privacy or confidentiality rules and must obtain permission for any third-party content.
For Springer Nature to publish your supplementary video file two conditions must be met:
Your camera-ready submission must be uploaded as a single compressed archive (.zip or .tgz). The maximum archive size is 100 MB.
Authors must remove any files that are not used in the compilation of the manuscript, including (but not limited to) previous versions of figures, backup copies of the manuscript, commented-out source files, or auxiliary material not required for compilation.
The submission archive must include:
.pdf),.tex),.bib and .bbl),.pdf, .eps, .png, .jpeg, .tiff, .bmp),.pdf),.mp4), if accepted via the decision email.Camera-ready submissions that do not comply with all requirements may be excluded from the conference proceedings.
After preparing your camera-ready manuscript and submission archive as described above, submit your files via EasyChair by following these steps:
.zip or .tgz) by clicking on Choose file.Camera-ready submission deadline: February 13, 2026, 23:59:59 (AoE).
You must fill in and sign the Springer copyright form. The form should be emailed to ants2026@rcps.tu-darmstadt.de with the subject:
"Copyright form paper <paper number> - <last name of first author>"
Please make sure to include the following information in the completed form:
The Proceedings are published by Springer-Nature in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.
The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated to ANTS 2026 that will contain extended versions of selected research works presented at the conference.
