Papers
7
Total Citations
66
H-Index
5
About
Raina Zakir investigates the intersection of swarm robotics and collective decision-making, with a focus on how robot groups can reach consensus in the face of disruptive individuals. Her research explores how strongly opinionated minorities—whether stubborn zealots or inflexible factions—can derail group decisions, and how mechanisms like cross-inhibition can break these deadlocks. In her most-cited work (2023, 19 citations), she demonstrates that cross-inhibition enables group consensus even when polarised minorities dominate, a finding with implications for both artificial and biological systems. Her 2022 paper on robot swarms breaking decision deadlocks (15 citations) and her 2021 study on the role of informed individuals against zealots (15 citations) further cement her contributions to understanding democratic processes in distributed systems. Notably, her 2024 work reveals that miscommunication between robots can paradoxically improve group accuracy in best-of-n decisions (5 citations), challenging conventional assumptions about communication fidelity. Her studies on heterogeneity (2024, 3 citations) and group-size regulation (2020, 6 citations) demonstrate how diversity and adaptive behaviour can enhance swarm robustness in dynamic environments. Zakir’s work is essential reading for anyone interested in resilient, decentralised decision-making in multi-agent systems.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 4Group-Size Regulation in Self-organized Aggregation in Robot Swarms6 citations · 2020
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