Santa Fe Institute presents Swarm Engineering Across Scales with Sabine Hauert

Swarm engineering allows us to make robots that work in large numbers (>1000), and tiny sizes (<1 cm). Swarm strategies are either inspired from nature (ant colonies, fish shoals, and bird flocks) or are automatically discovered using machine learning and crowdsourcing. Demonstrated applications include the deployment of swarms of flying robots to create outdoor communication networks, the use of 1000 coin-sized robots to form structures and explore their environment, and the design of nanoparticles for cancer treatment.

Sabine Hauert is Assistant Professor in Robotics at the University of Bristol in the UK. Profoundly cross-disciplinary, Sabine works between Engineering Mathematics, the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, and Life Sciences. Before joining the University of Bristol, Sabine engineered swarms of nanoparticles for cancer treatment at MIT, and deployed swarms of flying robots at EPFL. Sabine is also President and Co-founder of Robohub.org, a non-profit dedicated to connecting the robotics community to the world.

As an expert in science communication with 10 years of experience, Sabine is often invited to discuss the future of robotics and AI, including in the journals Science and Nature, at the European Parliament, and at the Royal Society.