Teaching robots to cooperate
Ming Cao is Professor of Networks and Robotics at the University of Groningen. Cao is a pioneer in the development of bio-inspired operating systems, enabling groups of robots to carry out tasks independently.
In the future, autonomous cars and robots that will need to take each other’s actions into account will be becoming more common. Cao is working on this development with colleagues from sociology, mathematics and biology. The algorithms that have been developed for the robots, for example, are partly inspired by how animals move, particularly fish and birds, which also operate in formation. ‘We used to design robots that were simply instructed to cooperate’, explains Cao. ‘It now turns out that robots that can make decisions themselves do not automatically cooperate if they have conflicting interests. We can change that using insights from sociology about how humans cooperate.’
University of Groningen videos
The weekly online video magazine Unifocus highlights topics related to the University of Groningen in the fields of research and society, student life, teaching, policy and internationalization.
You can find more videos in our video portal.
| Last modified: | 05 April 2019 11.52 a.m. |
More news
-
21 June 2019
Spinoza Prize 2019 for astronomer Amina Helmi
Amina Helmi, a professor of Astronomy specializing in Milky Way dynamics, structure and formation, will receive the Spinoza Prize in October.
-
14 June 2019
Small steps, big leaps – how marram grass builds dunes
The size and shape of dunes varies greatly around the world: in Europe they're tall and narrow, while in the US they're low and wide. A new study has found that this is partly because dunes are constructed by plants with different ‘movement strategies’...
-
13 June 2019
61 million euros for social and scientific breakthroughs
More than 200 researchers and their teams can begin to work on social and scientific issues in close collaboration with public and private parties. This close collaboration will take place in 17 research projects.