How do we minimize the risk of mid-air collisions between aircraft? And how does that change in the era of artificial intelligence and things like drone swarms?

Claire Tomlin works on questions like these, and her work is now the basis of a new field of AI in which a system automatically learns operational and control objectives from data, while maintaining things like flight safety.

We Meet:

University of California Berkeley’s Claire Tomlin, 2024 IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal recipient recognized “for foundational work in the design and verification of cyber-physical systems with applications to safety in autonomous systems”

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Anthony Green.

Oral History: Minimizing the Risk of Mid-Air Collisions