Related papers: A Continuification-Based Control Solution for Larg…
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…
In this paper, we propose a method to control large-scale multiagent systems swarming in a ring. Specifically, we use a continuification-based approach that transforms the microscopic, agent-level description of the system dynamics into a…
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…
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…
We investigate the stability and robustness properties of a continuification-based strategy for the control of large-scale multiagent systems. Within continuation-based strategy, one transforms the microscopic, agent-level description of…
Many new methodologies for the control of large-scale multi-agent systems are based on macroscopic representations of the emerging system dynamics, in the form of continuum approximations of large ensembles. These techniques, that are…
This paper investigates the robustness of a novel high-dimensional continuification control method for complex multi-agent systems. We begin by formulating a partial differential equation describing the spatio-temporal density dynamics of…
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…
This paper introduces a novel decentralized implementation of a continuification-based strategy to control the density of large-scale multi-agent systems on the unit circle. While continuification methods effectively address micro-to-macro…
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…
Robotic shepherding problem considers the control and navigation of a group of coherent agents (e.g., a flock of bird or a fleet of drones) through the motion of an external robot, called shepherd. Machine learning based methods have…
We review a body of recent work by the author and collaborators on controlling the spatial organisation of large agent populations across multiple scales. A central theme is the systematic bridging of microscopic agent-level dynamics and…
In this paper, we consider the swarm-control problem of spatially separating a specified target agent within the swarm from all the other agents, while maintaining the connectivity among the other agents. We specifically aim to achieve the…
We study the problem of distributed control of large-scale robotic swarms which can be modeled as continuum densities evolving under the continuity equation. We propose a formalization of distributed controllers as (generally nonlinear)…
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…
Swarm guidance addresses a challenging problem considering the navigation and control of a group of passive agents. To solve this problem, shepherding offers a bio-inspired technique of navigating such group of agents by using external…
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,…
Optimal control of large particle systems with collective dynamics by few agents is a subject of high practical importance (e.g. in evacuation dynamics), but still limited mathematical basis. In particular the transition from discrete…
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…
We present preliminary results on the problem of driving the dynamics of a group of agents, the herders, so as to steer the collective behaviour of another group of agents, the targets, interacting with them. We define this problem as the…