Natural swarms, such as ants, bees, and termites, exhibit sophisticated colony level behaviors with remarkably scalable and error tolerant properties. Their evolutionary success stems from more than just intelligent individuals, it hinges on their morphology, their physical interactions, and the way they shape and leverage their environment. Petersen's research explores how the same principles can be leveraged to achieve advanced autonomy in robot collectives, through hardware and software co-development, and by integrating the shared environment into the design process. Current research themes span collective robotic construction, human swarm interaction, soft robot collectives, biological swarms, and bio-hybrid collectives.
Kirstin did her postdoctoral work with Director Sitti at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 2014-2016 and became a fellow with the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems in 2015. Her thesis was completed in 2014 with Professor Nagpal at Harvard University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. She completed a masters in Computer Systems Engineering with Professor Hallam at the University of Southern Denmark in 2008, and a bachelor in electro-technical engineering with Odense University College of Engineering in 2005.
A research collaboration has found an efficient way to expand the collective behavior of swarming microrobots: Mixing different sizes of the micron-scale ‘bots enables them to self-organize into... Read more about Swarming microrobots self-organize into diverse patterns
A simple model that simultaneously simulates swarming behaviors and synchronized timing takes a step toward engineering microrobots and furthering our understanding of such phenomena in biology. Read more about ‘Swarmalators’ better envision synchronized microbots
Researchers designed a new system of fluid-driven actuators that enable soft robots to achieve more complex motions, leveraging the very thing – viscosity – that had previously stymied their movement. Read more about Soft robots harness viscous fluids for complex motions
