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About

William Savoie is a pioneering researcher in soft robotics and active matter, whose work redefines how we think about collective movement and self-organization. His key research areas include emergent robotics, active collectives, and entangled active matter. Savoie’s most influential contribution is the concept of "smarticles"—simple, autonomous robots that physically link to form larger, adaptive "supersmarticles." His landmark 2019 paper, "A robot made of robots" (98 citations), demonstrated how these ensembles achieve locomotion without centralized control, laying the foundation for a new class of reconfigurable robots. He also introduced "low rattling" as a predictive principle for self-organization in active collectives (82 citations), offering a unifying framework for understanding systems from ant rafts to molecular motors. More recently, his work on "amorphous entangled active matter" (25 citations) explores how living worms form blobs with emergent tensile strength, controllable via environmental oxygen. Savoie’s interdisciplinary approach—blending physics, biology, and engineering—has earned him recognition as a leader in next-generation robotics. His 2018 perspective, "Every robot is an experiment," encapsulates his philosophy that robotic systems are themselves scientific instruments for discovering new physics.