Learning from Ants and Bees: the Science of Biological Swarms Instructor: Payman Arabshahi , Applied Physics Laboratory/Department of Electrical Engineering In this Discovery Seminar, we take a look into the intriguing world of social insects and their behaviors. We will study phenomena such as flocking, shoaling, collective nest building, foraging, hunting, and attacking. We will investigate ants as natural models for solving numerous problems of interest in business and engineering. The foraging of ants has already led to new methods for routing voice and data traffic on networks. The cooperative interaction of ants working to transport food items may lead to better algorithms for robots. The way in which insects cluster their colonies’ dead and sort their larvae can help us in analyzing banking and security data. Simple rules followed by ants have already helped design sports stadiums, to make them safer for emergency evacuations; and the division of labor among honeybees and ants can help factories streamline their assembly lines and schedule jobs. We will look at these and other cases, as well as the science behind such behavior. Projects will challenge students to develop experiments or applications which take inspiration from swarming behavior. Meets: MTWTh 9:30-12:00
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