From Social Insects to Robots: Designing with Collective Embodied Intelligence

Speaker: <a href="https://www.duffield.cornell.edu/people/kirstin-hagelskjaer-petersen/">Kirstin Petersen</a> Organiser: <a href="https://www.epfl.ch/research/domains/robotics/">EPFL Robotics Center</a><br> &amp;<br> <a href="https://ai.epfl.ch/about/">EPFL AI Center</a> <p>Natural swarms exhibit sophisticated colony-level behaviors with remarkable scalability and error tolerance. Their evolutionary success stems from more than just intelligent individuals, it hinges on their morphology, their physical interactions, and the way they shape and leverage their environment. Mound-building termites, for instance, are believed to use their own body as a template for construction; the resulting dirt mound serves, among other things, to regulate volatile pheromone cues which in turn guide further construction and colony growth. Throughout this talk I will argue how we