Have you ever wondered how schools of fish know how to dodge predators? Or how bird flocks can choose the right direction? The answer lies in collective problem solving or swarm intelligence. Swarm intelligence refers to problem solving that is accomplished collectively ‘ by a group operating without centralized control. This type of decision making is not solely based in nature; it also has human applications, such as allocating telecommunication traffic among servers or directing nanobots within a body to kill cancer cells.

This year’s symposium focuses on swarm intelligence and its impact in nature and society by focusing on two areas of research: honeybees and robots. How do the thousands of individuals in a honeybee swarm work together to collectively choose a top-quality home site? This presentation reveals some take-home lessons from the bees, or swarm smarts, on how to foster good decision making by democratic groups of humans. And how do scientists apply knowledge of biological systems to programming robots for completing complex tasks in teams?

Other questions to be discussed include: Why should we suspect that robot groups and honey bee swarms can use similar software? What are the key differences between natural and artificial systems that limit the utility of biological inspiration? How can robot swarms solve problems like navigation and communication in different ways from natural systems?

The area of swarm intelligence offers fascinating insights, daunting challenges and exciting possibilities in the application of solutions evolved in nature to solving engineering problems.

Speakers

James McLurkin is a research associate at the University of Washington. His research focuses on developing distributed algorithms for multi-robot systems, which is software that produces complex group behaviors from the interactions of many simple individuals. These ideas are not new; ants, bees, wasps and termites have been using this type of behavior for 120 million years. The Swarm was originally created during McLurkin’s five-year tenure as lead research scientist at iRobot and was the largest swarm in the world at the time. McLurkin was the 2003 recipient of the Lemelson-MIT student prize for invention. He holds a SB in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Mechanical Engineering from M.I.T., an MS in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and a SM and PhD in Computer Science from M.I.T.

Thomas D. Seeley is a professor and the chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where he teaches courses in animal behavior and does research on the functional organization of honey bee colonies. He began keeping and studying bees in 1969, as a high school student. As a college student, he worked each summer in the honey bee laboratory at Cornell University, where he learned the craft of beekeeping and began probing the inner workings of the bee colony. Thoroughly intrigued by the smooth functioning of honey bee colonies, he went on to graduate school at Harvard University and earned his PhD in 1978. He has published his research on honey bee colonies in three books: ‘Honeybee Ecology,’ ‘The Wisdom of the Hive’ and ‘Honeybee Democracy,’ which will be published in 2009.

Allan Hook is the Lucian Professor of Natural Sciences at St. Edward’s University. Hook, who organized this symposium, has taught at St. Edward’s since 1988. His research focuses on the behavior and biodiversity of solitary wasps. Hook holds a BS in Biology from the University of Maine, an MS in Entomology from the University of Georgia, and a PhD in Zoology and Entomology from Colorado State University.