Related papers: A geometric condition for robot-swarm cohesion and…
Rotating clusters or vortices are formations of agents that rotate around a common center. These patterns may be found in very different contexts: from swirling fish to surveillance drones. Here, we propose a minimal model for…
Natural flocks (aligned) and swarms (non-aligned) both exhibit features of near-criticality, challenging their treatment as two ends of the same phase transition. We present a model for the aggregation of active individuals, in which their…
This paper presents decentralized algorithms for formation control of multiple robots in three dimensions. Specifically, we leverage the mathematical properties of cyclic pursuit along with results from contraction and partial contraction…
This paper introduces a distributed leaderless swarm formation control framework to address the problem of collectively driving a swarm of robots to track a time-varying formation. The swarm's formation is captured by the trajectory of an…
Understanding the organization of collective motion in biological systems is an ongoing challenge. In this Paper we consider a minimal model of self-propelled particles with variable speed. Inspired by experimental data from schooling fish,…
Curvature plays a central role in the proper function of many biological processes. With active matter being a standard framework for understanding many aspects of the physics of life, it is natural to ask what effect curvature has on the…
Swarms of self-propelled particles exhibit complex behavior that can arise from simple models, with large changes in swarm behavior resulting from small changes in model parameters. We investigate the steady-state swarms formed by…
This paper investigates efficient techniques to collect and concentrate an under-actuated particle swarm despite obstacles. Concentrating a swarm of particles is of critical importance in health-care for targeted drug delivery, where…
When particles move at a constant speed and have the tendency to align their directions of motion, ordered large scale movement can emerge despite significant levels of noise. Many variants of this model of self-propelled particles have…
We introduce the use of hierarchical clustering for relaxed, deterministic coordination and control of multiple robots. Traditionally an unsupervised learning method, hierarchical clustering offers a formalism for identifying and…
Whereas naturally occurring swarms thrive when crowded, physical interactions in robotic swarms are either avoided or carefully controlled, thus limiting their operational density. Here we present a mechanical design rule that allows robots…
In this paper, we extended previous studies of cooperating autonomous robots to include situations when environmental changes and changes in the number of robots in the swarm can affect the efficiency to execute tasks assigned to the swarm…
We study verification problems for autonomous swarms of mobile robots that self-organize and cooperate to solve global objectives. In particular, we focus in this paper on the model proposed by Suzuki and Yamashita of anonymous robots…
The properties of small clusters depend dramatically on the interactions between their constituent particles. However, it remains challenging to design and tune the interactions between macroscopic particles, such as in a granular material.…
Computational models of collective behavior in birds has allowed us to infer interaction rules directly from experimental data. Using a generic form of these rules we explore the collective behavior and emergent dynamics of a simulated…
In the formation control problem for autonomous robots a distributed control law steers the robots to the desired target formation. A local stability result of the target formation can be derived by methods of linearization and center…
We present a number of powerful local mechanisms for maintaining a dynamic swarm of robots with limited capabilities and information, in the presence of external forces and permanent node failures. We propose a set of local continuous…
We use coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to study the motility of a 2D vesicle containing self-propelled rods, as a function of the vesicle bending rigidity and the number density, length, and activity of the enclosed rods.…
Motivated by advances is nanoscale applications and simplistic robot agents, we look at problems based on using a global signal to move all agents when given a limited number of directional signals and immovable geometry. We study a model…
Asymmetric obstacles can be exploited to direct the motion and induce sorting of run-and-tumbling particles. In this work, we show that flocking particles which follow the Vicsek model aligning rules experience a collective trapping in the…