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About

Airlie Chapman is a leading researcher in distributed multi-agent systems, with a focus on coverage control, robotic swarms, and human-robot interaction. Her work addresses fundamental challenges in coordinating networks of mobile agents, from theoretical foundations to practical human-in-the-loop applications. Chapman’s most cited paper, "Generalized Coverage Control for Time-Varying Density Functions" (17 citations), develops distributed algorithms for positioning robotic networks to provide optimal sensor coverage over dynamic environments. She has also made significant contributions to formation control, introducing submodular optimization techniques for topology design in "Weighted Bearing-Compass Dynamics" (14 citations). More recently, Chapman has pioneered research at the intersection of trust and swarm robotics, exploring how human preferences shape interactions with multi-agent systems. Her work on "Asymmetrical Trust Modeling for Human-Robot Swarm Interactions" (2025) and "Individual and Team Trust Preferences for Robotic Swarm Behaviors" (2022) establishes frameworks for understanding and modeling trust in human-swarm teams. Chapman’s research spans from rigorous control-theoretic analysis to applied human-robot collaboration, with her coverage control work addressing disturbance rejection through input-to-output stability frameworks. Her contributions are advancing the deployment of autonomous swarms in real-world scenarios requiring both technical reliability and human trust.