(highlight:: The Periodicity of Firefly Blinks is an Emergent Property of the Swarm
Summary:
The fireflies inside a tent and outside the tent have the same pattern but are not synchronized.
The fireflies inside the tent are visually disconnected from the rest of the swarm and therefore do not communicate or synchronize with them. However, when more than 15 fireflies are together and can see each other, they exhibit the same pattern.
This collective periodicity is an emergent property that requires a certain number of individuals.
Researchers are excited about this discovery and are developing mathematical models to better understand and explain it.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So the period and the timing of the global characteristic of that signal remains the same inside the tent and also outside the tent, but they're not aligned. So they can be shifted relative to each other in the phase. So it could be that the fireflies in the tent are inside the burst, so they're flashing, but the fireflies are outside or not. And that's just because we explicitly block their field of vision. So they're visually disconnected from the rest of the swarm and this is why they're not communicating with them and they're not synchronized with them.
Speaker 2
So they're not synchronized, it makes sense, but the pattern is the same. It's just not in sync with the outside pattern. So you say that once we get more than 15 fireflies together and they can all see each other, you get the same pattern, yes, which is incredible given that the pattern of an individual firefly, I'm not going to quite say it's random, but it's a lot more random than that.
Speaker 1
Yeah, the idea of the collective periodicity being an emergent property only happens above a certain number of individuals is new and we're very excited about it. We're trying to come up with new mathematical models that would help us understand it better and explain that emergent periodicity.)
- Time 0:17:52
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(highlight:: Learning from Fireflies: Synchronizing Systems and People without a Central Controller
Summary:
Distributed systems, like swarm robotics, can learn from fireflies on how to synchronize without a central controller.
By observing the synchronization of fireflies, researchers can apply the principles to robots working together to carry heavy objects. By having an internal clock and synchronizing their actions, the robots can achieve better coordination and efficiency.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
If we went to go out and design systems that synchronize, again, back to this concept of without having a central controller to dictate how that's going to happen, what do we learn from This sort of work?
Speaker 1
Yeah, so going back to technology that is distributed, like in swarm robotics, there's quite a lot of excitement about getting robots to synchronize also in a distributed way. Imagine that you have a group of robots that need to perform collective transportation, which is a fancy term for carrying a large object, a heavy object together. So of course, the whole process will tend to work better when they're all pushing at the same time, or at least not fighting against each other in terms of when and where they push. So if they had this internal clock where they would synchronize, then they would be able to achieve that. But learning from the fireflies that had, again, eons of evolution to perfect some of these processes could be applicable for systems like swarm robotics and creating synchronization In a distributed way there.)
- Time 0:23:45
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