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Angela Schoelig

Professor of University of Toronto

Angela Schoellig, leads the Dynamic Systems Lab at the University of Toronto, and has developed algorithms that allow robots to learn together. Her algorithms are helping self-driving and self-flying vehicles move around more safely.

As a PhD student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Schoellig worked with others to develop the Flying Machine Arena, a 10-cubic-meter space for training drones to fly together in an enclosed area.

In 2010, she created a performance involving a fleet of UAV’s that flew synchronously to music. To do so, she developed algorithms that allowed the drones to adapt their movements to match the music’s tempo, and to coordinate with one another to avoid collision, without manual control by researchers. In 2017, she was named as one of 35 Innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review.