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SUMMARY:Collective Intelligence\, from Nature to Robots
DTSTART:20181105T101500
DTEND:20181105T110000
DTSTAMP:20260509T054254Z
UID:c65ed383881d290fab1f463af4a3a651def8a4dc47ef75c162c790eb
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Radhika Nagpal\, Harvard University\nInstitute of Microe
 ngineering - Distinguished Lecture\nco-hosted by the NCCR Robotics\n\nAbst
 ract: In nature\, groups of thousands of individuals cooperate to create c
 omplex structure purely through local interactions -- from cells that form
  complex organisms\, to social insects like termites that build meter-high
  mounds and army ants that self-assemble into bridges and nests\, to the c
 omplex and mesmerizing motion of fish schools and bird flocks. What makes 
 these systems so fascinating to scientists and engineers alike\, is that e
 ven though each individual has limited ability\, as a collective they achi
 eve tremendous complexity.\nWhat would it take to create our own artificia
 l collectives of the scale and complexity that nature achieves? In this ta
 lk I will discuss four different ongoing projects that use inspiration fro
 m biological self-assembly to create robotic systems: The Kilobot Swarm\, 
 inspired by cells\, the Termes robots\, inspired by mound-building termite
 s\, the Eciton soft robots inspired by army ants\, and the BlueSwarm proje
 ct inspired by fish schools. There are many challenges for both building a
 nd programming robot swarms\, and we use these systems to explore decentra
 lized algorithms\, embodied intelligence\, and methods for synthesizing co
 mplex global behavior. Our theme is the same: can we create simple robots 
 that cooperate to achieve collective complexity?\n\nBio: Radhika Nagpal is
  the Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University and a core 
 faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
 . At Harvard\, she leads the Self-organizing Systems Research Group (SSR) 
 and her research interests span computer science\, robotics\, and biology.
  Her awards include the Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship (2005)\, NSF Care
 er Award (2007)\, Borg Early Career Award (2010)\, Radcliffe Fellowship (2
 012)\, and the McDonald Mentoring Award (2015). Nagpal was named by Nature
  magazine as one of the top ten influential scientists and engineers of th
 e year (Nature 10 award\, Dec 2014).\n\nQ&A session with female researcher
 s (initiated by NCCR Robotics):\nAfter the talk\, there will be a Q&A sess
 ion with female researchers in SV.2.510.\n\nLive Streaming\nPlease observe
 \, that the lecture will be live streamed using zoom. You can directly acc
 ess the event from your preferred device PC\, Mac\, Linux\, iOS or Android
  via https://epfl.zoom.us/j/493928789. There will be no recording availabl
 e after the lecture.
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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