Justin Werfel: Robotics lessons from termites
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2013
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A physicist decides that the best way to make progress on his robotics project is to go to Namibia to study termites. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more here: http://storycollider.org/ Justin Werfel is a research scientist at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He received his PhD at MIT and did postdoctoral work at Harvard and the New England Complex Systems Institute. He works on topics including swarm robotics, evolutionary theory, DNA self-assembly, and cancer modeling, and recently published an invited book chapter about the ecology of Fraggle Rock. He's a two-time MassMouth Big Mouth Off finalist and Audience Choice winner.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.0 | I felt... |
| 0:07.0 | I was so... |
| 0:09.0 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:13.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:15.0 | Hey, everyone. Hey everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true stories of how science has affected people's lives. |
| 0:31.6 | This week's story is from Justin Werfel. |
| 0:34.3 | The story was recorded in June 2013 at Johnny Dees in Somerville, Massachusetts. |
| 0:39.6 | The theme of the night was, the science I never expected. |
| 0:49.2 | Being a scientist means that I get excited about stupid things. Like the fact that my business cards |
| 0:57.6 | say scientist. Like the fact that my institute issued me three lab coats with my name |
| 1:04.4 | printed in the collar. I work in front of a computer, but I get official lab coats. That's awesome. You know I'm going to find a reason |
| 1:13.0 | to wear that. It gets cold in the office sometimes. Most of my work is in robotics, in coming |
| 1:20.0 | up with ways to get large numbers of independent robots to do things you want together, |
| 1:24.9 | which is how I ended up in Namibia, obviously. |
| 1:29.0 | It's because a lot of this kind of work in swarm robotics is inspired by social insects, |
| 1:34.6 | by things like ants and bees, where you've got thousands or millions of independent agents. |
| 1:40.0 | Each one is capable of not very much on its own, but together they can do amazing things. |
| 1:44.0 | They're the most successful insects on the planet. |
| 1:46.0 | We want to try to figure out how to harness some of that power. |
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