Coherent Pattern Prediction in Swarms of Delay-Coupled Agents

We consider a general swarm model of self-propelling agents interacting through a pairwise potential in the presence of noise and communication time delay. Previous work [Phys. Rev. E 77, 035203(R) (2008)] has shown that a communication time delay in the swarm induces a pattern bifurcation that depends on the size of the coupling amplitude. We extend these results by completely unfolding the bifurcation structure of the mean field approximation. Our analysis reveals a direct correspondence between the different dynamical behaviors found in different regions of the coupling-time delay plane with the different classes of simulated coherent swarm patterns. We derive the spatio-temporal scales of the swarm structures, and also demonstrate how the complicated interplay of coupling strength, time delay, noise intensity, and choice of initial conditions can affect the swarm. In particular, our studies show that for sufficiently large values of the coupling strength and/or the time delay, there is a noise intensity threshold that forces a transition of the swarm from a misaligned state into an aligned state. We show that this alignment transition exhibits hysteresis when the noise intensity is taken to be time dependent

6th International congress of the Serbian society of mechanics: Review

Ovaj rad prikazuje najvažnije informacije o 6. kongresu Srpskog društva za mehaniku, koji je održan na Tari od 19. do 21. juna 2017. Kongres je organizovan od strane Srpskog društva za mehaniku. Dat je kratak prikaz najznačajnijih radova predstavljenih na ovom kongresu, a koji se bave teorijskom i primenjenom mehanikom.This paper presents the most important information and describes the activities of the 6th Congress of the Serbian Society of Mechanics which was held on mountain Tara, on 19- 21 June, 2017. The Congress was organized by the Serbian Society of Mechanics. Brief summaries of the plenary lectures and some of 99 accepted papers, which admittedly attracted the most interest were shown as well

6th International congress of the Serbian society of mechanics: Review

Ovaj rad prikazuje najvažnije informacije o 6. kongresu Srpskog društva za mehaniku, koji je održan na Tari od 19. do 21. juna 2017. Kongres je organizovan od strane Srpskog društva za mehaniku. Dat je kratak prikaz najznačajnijih radova predstavljenih na ovom kongresu, a koji se bave teorijskom i primenjenom mehanikom.This paper presents the most important information and describes the activities of the 6th Congress of the Serbian Society of Mechanics which was held on mountain Tara, on 19- 21 June, 2017. The Congress was organized by the Serbian Society of Mechanics. Brief summaries of the plenary lectures and some of 99 accepted papers, which admittedly attracted the most interest were shown as well

Analysis and control of agreement and disagreement opinion cascades

We introduce and analyze a continuous time and state-space model of opinion cascades on networks of large numbers of agents that form opinions about two or more options. By leveraging our recent results on the emergence of agreement and disagreement states, we introduce novel tools to analyze and control agreement and disagreement opinion cascades. New notions of agreement and disagreement centrality, which depend only on network structure, are shown to be key to characterizing the nonlinear behavior of agreement and disagreement opinion formation and cascades. Our results are relevant for the analysis and control of opinion cascades in real-world networks, including biological, social and artificial networks, and for the design of opinion-forming behaviors in robotic swarms. We illustrate an application of our model to a multi-robot task-allocation problem and discuss extensions and future directions opened by our modeling framework

A Survey on Aerial Swarm Robotics

The use of aerial swarms to solve real-world problems has been increasing steadily, accompanied by falling prices and improving performance of communication, sensing, and processing hardware. The commoditization of hardware has reduced unit costs, thereby lowering the barriers to entry to the field of aerial swarm robotics. A key enabling technology for swarms is the family of algorithms that allow the individual members of the swarm to communicate and allocate tasks amongst themselves, plan their trajectories, and coordinate their flight in such a way that the overall objectives of the swarm are achieved efficiently. These algorithms, often organized in a hierarchical fashion, endow the swarm with autonomy at every level, and the role of a human operator can be reduced, in principle, to interactions at a higher level without direct intervention. This technology depends on the clever and innovative application of theoretical tools from control and estimation. This paper reviews the state of the art of these theoretical tools, specifically focusing on how they have been developed for, and applied to, aerial swarms. Aerial swarms differ from swarms of ground-based vehicles in two respects: they operate in a three-dimensional space and the dynamics of individual vehicles adds an extra layer of complexity. We review dynamic modeling and conditions for stability and controllability that are essential in order to achieve cooperative flight and distributed sensing. The main sections of this paper focus on major results covering trajectory generation, task allocation, adversarial control, distributed sensing, monitoring, and mapping. Wherever possible, we indicate how the physics and subsystem technologies of aerial robots are brought to bear on these individual areas