Episode 104: Robot swarms inspired by nature - Kirstin Petersen
Kirstin Petersen, an Associate Professor at Cornell University and leader of the Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab, discusses her research into robot swarms inspired by social insects like ants, bees, and slime molds. She explains the distinction between centralized teams and distributed swarms, highlighting how nature achieves resilience through local interaction and environmental modification rather than global planning. The conversation covers specific applications such as autonomous robotic construction for housing and hostile environments, the potential of soft robot swarms, and the use of simple, low-cost robots to achieve complex emergent behaviors.