{"id":228038,"date":"2026-03-26T23:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T03:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/how-penn-engineering-is-working-to-safely-scale-ai-agents-to-the-physical-world\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T01:52:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T05:52:39","slug":"how-penn-engineering-is-working-to-safely-scale-ai-agents-to-the-physical-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/how-penn-engineering-is-working-to-safely-scale-ai-agents-to-the-physical-world\/","title":{"rendered":"How Penn Engineering is working to safely scale AI agents to the physical world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedp.com\/article\/2026\/03\/penn-engineering-swarm-artificial-intelligence-safety-research\">How Penn Engineering is working to safely scale AI agents to the physical world<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedp.com\/article\/2026\/03\/penn-engineering-swarm-artificial-intelligence-safety-research\">https:\/\/www.thedp.com\/article\/2026\/03\/penn-engineering-swarm-artificial-intelligence-safety-research<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-26 23:10:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.thedp.com\">www.thedp.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Penn Engineering recently launched a project designed to safely bring artificial intelligence agents into the physical world.<\/p>\n<p>The new research, based in Penn Engineering\u2019s xLab, is led by Electrical and Systems Engineering professor Rahul Mangharam. The lab explores how large groups of AI agents \u2014 systems that act on behalf of users \u2014 can operate together without causing harm in a high-stakes environment.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s current goal is to design algorithms that integrate AI and machine learning into \u201clife-critical systems,\u201d Mangharam told The Daily Pennsylvanian. The research, he added, is especially important as the field transitions towards \u201cembodied intelligence,\u201d or physical AI systems.<\/p>\n<p>While virtual agents can be scaled relatively easily, physical agents require engineers to consider spatial and reactive safety to ensure they avoid collisions \u2014 limiting ability to scale beyond small groups of agents.<\/p>\n<p>According to Mangharam, most algorithms \u201cdon\u2019t scale beyond a single digit number of agents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-serif\">Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n<p>   <span class=\"ps-2\">Sign Up<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Haimin Hu, a postdoctoral researcher in the xLab, said that their team is working with a scale far beyond that, from hundreds to thousands of agents.<\/p>\n<p>He told the DP that the scaling process also introduces real-world constraints such as communication delays and challenges with \u201chuman-AI interactions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Researchers must also ensure their designs allow thousands of independent agents to make decisions simultaneously without conflict.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are interested in understanding how to scale these systems up and how to have them develop their own skills and form teams,\u201d Mangharam said. \u201cRather than assigning teams, [agents] can observe others and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedp.com\/article\/2026\/03\/penn-engineering-swarm-artificial-intelligence-safety-research\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Penn Engineering is working to safely scale AI agents to the physical world https:\/\/www.thedp.com\/article\/2026\/03\/penn-engineering-swarm-artificial-intelligence-safety-research&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/snworksceo.imgix.net\/dpn\/f13fc349-bf95-4740-a0db-cc652ce5cd50.sized-1000x1000.jpg?w=800&h=600","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228040,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228038\/revisions\/228040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}