The seminar “Teams, Swarms, Crowds, and Collectives: Special Cases?”, presented by Gal Kaminka, will be held on September 5, at 3 p.m., in room 1.38 (Técnico – Taguspark campus).

Teams of agents and robots, swarms of robots or animals, crowds of people, and collectives (of everything) permeate our technological, biological, and sociological worlds. They have inspired generations of researchers in multi-agent and multi-robot systems. However, much of the research has split along technological and philosophical fault-lines: emergent or planned? communicating or just sensing? Globally coordinated, or locally-reactive? Rational or procedural?

This talk will briefly explore three fronts, which bridge over such fault lines: Cognitive psychology connecting with human crowds, reinforcement learning in swarms connecting with game theory, and Asimov’s laws implemented in molecular robots (nanobots). These fronts hint at a broader and deeper science of social intelligence that is still waiting to be discovered.