Sabine Hauert (Swarm robotics and artificial evolution)

In this episode I interview Professor Sabine Hauert about the super interesting work she does on the control of swarm robots, how considering nanoparticles as swarms can be used to treat cancer, and how morphogenesis can generate structure from random interactions.

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References

Sabine: https://hauertlab.com/

Podcasts/ TEDx talks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn1gmcs-HXU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBbYuzhxpE0

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vvknnV6325Q

Robot Talk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0JWPnKQmwTQdM1K7247jkq

Complexity: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6nfcUpB3wesHqXP5XzSPAl

Engenius: https://open.spotify.com/episode/34jert4EQGBVrQBfS4OfxW

Research

Invertebrate inspiration review paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-3190/acc223/meta

Centipede control inspiration: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0171421

David Garzon-Ramos: https://dgarzonramos.com/

Puzzle/ Problem/mess paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22478

Dario Floriano: https://people.epfl.ch/dario.floreano?lang=en

Manuela Veloso: https://engineering.cmu.edu/directory/bios/veloso-manuela.html

PhD

PhD thesis: https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/dbb9fe40-930c-4e54-a5c0-10b62ebb6d1c
Robot swarm video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_qRuHkD5lc

Onboard evolution of swarm behaviours: https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/aisy.201900031

Supervisory control papers: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/229980063/Paper_SWARM2019.pdf

MAP-elites algorithm: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-77538-8_49

Morphogenesis

James Sharpe: https://www.embl.org/people/person/james-sharpe/

Original paper: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/scirobotics.aau9178

Controllability of morphogenesis: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/toward-controllable-morphogenesis-in-large-robot-swarms

Controllability in control theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controllability

Steve Brunton controllability Gramian video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNHx62HbKNA

Alan Turing reaction diffusion paper: https://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/cs191/paperscs191/turing.pdf

Nanoswarms

Sangita Bhatia: https://ki.mit.edu/people/faculty/sangeeta-bhatia

Nanoswarm papers: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4295824/

John Ives: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Jonathan-Ives-fa38de81-8d34-4978-a99d-1f55efe2e0f4/

Matimba Swana: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/matimba-c-swana

Outreach

AIhub.org: https://aihub.org/

Robohub.org: https://robohub.org/

Drones for 3D printing buildings: https://robohub.org/five-ways-drones-will-change-the-way-buildings-are-designed/

AI environmental impact: https://aihub.org/2025/02/06/explained-generative-ais-environmental-impact/

AI for drug development: https://aihub.org/2025/01/09/will-ai-revolutionize-drug-development-researchers-explain-why-it-depends-on-how-its-used/

Extra questions

Radhika Nagpal: https://www.radhikanagpal.org/

Dot robots: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.13809