Southampton researchers are at the forefront of a new science that is finding ways in which computers can work intelligently in partnership with people.
This could support the management of some of today’s most challenging situations, such as the aftermath of major disasters and smart energy systems.
The five-year ORCHID project has looked at how we work with computers: instead of issuing instructions to passive machines, we will increasingly work in partnership with agents, highly interconnected computational components that are able to act autonomously and intelligently, forming human-agent collectives (HACs).
Today (22 September), at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, there will be a showcase of world-leading ORCHID research from the fields of energy systems, citizen science and disaster response. The event will feature keynote talks from project leaders, presentations of case studies and demonstrations of technologies.
The £10m funded project has brought together around 60 researchers from the universities of Southampton, Oxford and Nottingham, together with industrial partners. It is led by Professor Nick Jennings, who leads the University’s Agents Research Group – the largest research group of its kind in the world.
Professor Jennings says:
“This vision of people and computational agents operating at a global scale offers tremendous potential and, if realised correctly, will help us meet the key societal challenges of sustainability, inclusion, and safety that are core to our future.”