Unstable oscillations and bistability in delay-coupled swarms
Abstract
It is known from both theory and experiments that introducing time delays into the communication network of mobile-agent swarms produces coherent rotational patterns. Often such spatio-temporal rotations can be bistable with other swarming patterns, such as milling and flocking. Yet, most known bifurcation results related to delay-coupled swarms rely on inaccurate mean-field techniques. As a consequence, the utility of applying macroscopic theory as a guide for predicting and controlling swarms of mobile robots has been limited. To overcome this limitation, we perform an exact stability analysis of two primary swarming patterns in a general model with time-delayed interactions. By correctly identifying the relevant spatio-temporal modes that determine stability in the presence of time delay, we are able to accurately predict bistability and unstable oscillations in large swarm simulations-- laying the groundwork for comparisons to robotics experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2002.12420,
title = {Unstable oscillations and bistability in delay-coupled swarms},
author = {Jason Hindes and Victoria Edwards and Sayomi Kamimoto and Ioana Triandaf and Ira B. Schwartz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.12420},
year = {2020}
}