| Title | Threats to Our Oceans: Towards Swarm Intelligence Solutions |
| Speaker | Prof. David Corne |
| Chair | Simone Ludwig |
Abstract
Coral reefs embrace the planet and support the livelihoods of half a billion people, but they are threatened from several directions, and it tends to be an overwhelmingly slow and dangerous task to protect them. Meanwhile, there are many other threats to the marine environment, such as marine litter, which kills millions of animals and birds annually. An interdisciplinary and multi-institution team of scientists and engineers are pursuing an exciting way to deal with this and other problems that threaten the marine environment, by combining autonomous underwater robotics, swarm intelligence, computer vision, and marine biology.
This portfolio of projects is at an early stage. In this talk I will discuss progress so far, but will also discuss the germination of the idea, the remarkable (and continuing) interest from the media, and the multiple sources of funding (including crowdfunding) that we are exploring to allow us to (i) start addressing these threats urgently, and (ii) develop new science and engineering approaches that will ensure longer term success.
Biography
David Corne is a Professor of Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland. He is currently Director of Research for the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, leader of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory, and other things that he forgets at the moment. His research keywords are optimisation, evolutionary algorithms, machine learning, data analytics, text analytics, and (increasingly) environmental applications. He hates writing long biographies.
