Galileo Night Lecture: Naomi Ehrich Leonard – The Art and Science of Collective Decision-Making
Flocking birds, schooling fish, swarming bees, and other animal groups that lack centralized control can nonetheless meet real-world uncertainties with collective decision-making that is fast, flexible, adaptive, and often stunningly beautiful. This lecture will discuss Professor Leonard’s theory, which shows how these complex collective behaviors emerge from relatively simple choices individual animals make in response to their neighbors and environment. She will show further how the theory can be harnessed in science and art, such as for environmental monitoring with robotic teams and for rule-based improvisational dance. Crucially, Professor Leonard will discuss how her design and art-making experiments inform the science that motivated them. Here, art and science meet and expand one another.
