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This paper investigates decentralized shepherding in cluttered environments, where a limited number of herders must guide a larger group of non-cohesive, diffusive targets toward a goal region in the presence of static obstacles. A…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-27 Cristiana Punzo , Italo Napolitano , Cinzia Tomaselli , Mario di Bernardo

The problem of guiding a flock of agents to a destination by the repulsion forces exerted by a smaller number of external agents is called the shepherding problem. This problem has attracted attention due to its potential applications,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2022-10-21 Anna Fujioka , Masaki Ogura , Naoki Wakamiya

The control and guidance of multi-robots (swarm) is a non-trivial problem due to the complexity inherent in the coupled interaction among the group. Whether the swarm is cooperative or non-cooperative, lessons can be learnt from sheepdogs…

We present a decentralized reinforcement learning (RL) approach to address the multi-agent shepherding control problem, departing from the conventional assumption of cohesive target groups. Our two-layer control architecture consists of a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-01-29 Italo Napolitano , Andrea Lama , Francesco De Lellis , Mario di Bernardo

Designing systems for autonomous transport of groups of living agents has received a lot of attention in recent years due to a wealth of important potential applications. Biomimetic approaches are often sought, and a range of herding…

Other Quantitative Biology · Quantitative Biology 2026-02-20 Daniel Strömbom , Julianna Hoitt , Cameron Cloud

Robotic shepherding is a bio-inspired approach to autonomously guiding a swarm of agents towards a desired location. The research area has earned increasing research interest recently due to the efficacy of controlling a large number of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Jing Liu , Hemant Singh , Saber Elsayed , Robert Hunjet , Hussein Abbass

Shepherding involves herding a swarm of agents (\emph{sheep}) by another a control agent (\emph{sheepdog}) towards a goal. Multiple approaches have been documented in the literature to model this behaviour. In this paper, we present a…

Multi-agent shepherding represents a challenging distributed control problem where herder agents must coordinate to guide independently moving targets to desired spatial configurations. Most existing control strategies assume cohesive…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-05 Italo Napolitano , Stefano Covone , Andrea Lama , Francesco De Lellis , Mario di Bernardo

Swarm control is a difficult problem due to the need to guide a large number of agents simultaneously. We cast the problem as a shepherding problem, similar to biological dogs guiding a group of sheep towards a goal. The shepherd needs to…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2019-03-25 Alexander Gee , Hussein Abbass

The problem of guiding a flock of several autonomous agents using repulsion force exerted by a smaller number of agents is called the shepherding problem and has been attracting attention due to its potential engineering applications.…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2023-04-11 Anna Fujioka , Masaki Ogura , Naoki Wakamiya

The simultaneous control of multiple coordinated robotic agents represents an elaborate problem. If solved, however, the interaction between the agents can lead to solutions to sophisticated problems. The concept of swarming, inspired by…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-13 Nathan K Long , Karl Sammut , Daniel Sgarioto , Matthew Garratt , Hussein Abbass

We propose a decentralized reinforcement learning solution for multi-agent shepherding of non-cohesive targets using policy-gradient methods. Our architecture integrates target-selection with target-driving through Proximal Policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-04 Stefano Covone , Italo Napolitano , Francesco De Lellis , Mario di Bernardo

We study the shepherding control problem where a group of "herders" need to orchestrate their collective behaviour in order to steer the dynamics of a group of "target" agents towards a desired goal. We relax the strong assumptions of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-02-22 Andrea Lama , Mario di Bernardo

Recent advances in robotics have enabled the widespread deployment of autonomous robotic systems in complex operational environments, presenting both unprecedented opportunities and significant security problems. Traditional shepherding…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-11 Wenqing Wang , Ye Zhang , Haoyu Li , Jingyu Wang

The shepherding problem refers to guiding a group of agents (called sheep) to a specific destination using an external agent with repulsive forces (called shepherd). Although various movement algorithms for the shepherd have been explored…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2023-06-22 Yaosheng Deng , Aiyi Li , Masaki Ogura , Naoki Wakamiya

Animals and robots exist in a physical world and must coordinate their bodies to achieve behavioral objectives. With recent developments in deep reinforcement learning, it is now possible for scientists and engineers to obtain sensorimotor…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-05-21 Yusheng Jiao , Feng Ling , Sina Heydari , Nicolas Heess , Josh Merel , Eva Kanso

Reinforcement learning is a machine learning approach based on behavioral psychology. It is focused on learning agents that can acquire knowledge and learn to carry out new tasks by interacting with the environment. However, a problem…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-12-15 Hugo Muñoz , Ernesto Portugal , Angel Ayala , Bruno Fernandes , Francisco Cruz

Assistance robots have gained widespread attention in various industries such as logistics and human assistance. The tasks of guiding or following a human in a crowded environment such as airports or train stations to carry weight or goods…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Linh Kästner , Bassel Fatloun , Zhengcheng Shen , Daniel Gawrisch , Jens Lambrecht

Autonomous vehicles are suited for continuous area patrolling problems. However, finding an optimal patrolling strategy can be challenging for many reasons. Firstly, patrolling environments are often complex and can include unknown…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Chenhao Tong , Aaron Harwood , Maria A. Rodriguez , Richard O. Sinnott

Mobile robot navigation in complex and dynamic environments is a challenging but important problem. Reinforcement learning approaches fail to solve these tasks efficiently due to reward sparsities, temporal complexities and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2018-04-30 Xi Chen , Ali Ghadirzadeh , John Folkesson , Patric Jensfelt
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