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Our robot swarm study looked at how opinions spread in large populations.
We show that there are situations when the opposite occurs.
If a robot receives a conflicting opinion, it resets its own opinion by polling other robots.
This allows the swarm to reach consensus without getting deadlocked.
Its key to buildingrobot swarms of the future.
This process is similar to collective decision-making in other prefs, including animals and humans.
Bees interact locally with one another and exchange voting messages by vibrations.
The bee colony makes decisions without any central authority.
Similar collective decisions can be observed in schools of fish, who seem to know the less-is-more rule.
This corresponds to what organisms including humans typically do.
This is what is predicted and observed in most models of networked individuals.
We then built a mathematical model that described the system and explained the observed phenomenon.
Environmental changes are discovered by a small group.
Lessons for social media
Theless-is-more effectdoesnt hold up in all cases.
People are globally connected through social media, which influences the spread of opinions in large populations.
Understanding how opinions change and dont is crucial forfacing the challenges of the digital age.
