This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance on Zoom.

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the field of swarm robotics has seen rapid advancements, from research to industry. While most work focuses on programmed intelligence, swarms in nature demonstrate that physical intelligence—where agents perform tasks based on their morphology and physical interactions with the environment—also plays a critical role. In my work, I have developed a robotic swarm of smart particles, or ‘smarticles,’ which can serve both as a taskable robotic platform and as a smart material. In this talk, I will discuss the electro-mechanical design, sensory feedback mechanisms, and adaptive control strategies that enable smarticles to exhibit emergent collective motion, demonstrating how they can operate autonomously without the need for a central controller, high-bandwidth communication, or extensive pre-planning.