Gadgetory

can a swarm of robots show how schools of fish and flocks a bird actually follow predictable mathematic behavior that's just what the museum in math wants to showcase and its new exhibits well when we were first kicking around ideas at the beginning you know what do we want to have in our Museum there was a thought that we should have an exhibit that would bring out the mathematics of what's called emergent behavior how simple little individual rules that each of many entities could be following can lead to a global dynamic that is more than the sum of those parts that seems lifelike or intelligent even though at the root it's just a simple mathematical rule being applied over and over again how did you actually translate organic seeming behavior into out others right well that is that that's the amazing wonder of the mathematics of emergent behavior so to give this right now it looks like all the time of following this leader there's no leader here every one of these robots is following exactly the same rules and i can tell you basically what they are they are don't get too close to your neighbor okay don't get too far away from your neighbor and assuming those are both satisfied try it ahead in the average direction of your three nearest neighbors now we talked a little bit like behavior studies but it also we've seen a little bit of like real world application obviously collision detection and cars are big right is this borrow permeating in the real world or I like indicative of what we'll see go for it absolutely we produce this exhibit we had to you know take the cutting edge of technology in a lot of different directions so for example this floor positioning system is sort of a cousin of a system that Amazon uses and it's automated factories so that you know the shelves full of your order you know your Christmas shopping you know don't smack into each other as those robots are bringing it to me you know to be shipped when you're looking at like how to educate kids and what this kind of goes for it are you planning on doing more of these kind of I guess computer science centric exhibits right well I mean the thing I would like to say you're talking about getting kids we know why do we want to expose kids of this you don't have an early age it's because you know if you wanted one of it akin to study music to take you to a symphony but when where do we do that in mathematics where do we ever show them the amazing achievements that this mathematics can lead them to this is the symphony of mathematics the symphony in mathematics is a boxing ring where you get to be a robot God well there you go we're hoping to get kids excited and then we'll show them where it all leads and get the more excited involved in mathematics that they're forced to study every day