1,156 research outputs found
Transport in Transitory Dynamical Systems
We introduce the concept of a "transitory" dynamical system---one whose
time-dependence is confined to a compact interval---and show how to quantify
transport between two-dimensional Lagrangian coherent structures for the
Hamiltonian case. This requires knowing only the "action" of relevant
heteroclinic orbits at the intersection of invariant manifolds of "forward" and
"backward" hyperbolic orbits. These manifolds can be easily computed by
leveraging the autonomous nature of the vector fields on either side of the
time-dependent transition. As illustrative examples we consider a
two-dimensional fluid flow in a rotating double-gyre configuration and a simple
one-and-a-half degree of freedom model of a resonant particle accelerator. We
compare our results to those obtained using finite-time Lyapunov exponents and
to adiabatic theory, discussing the benefits and limitations of each method.Comment: Updated and corrected version. LaTeX, 29 pages, 21 figure
Multi-agent decision-making dynamics inspired by honeybees
When choosing between candidate nest sites, a honeybee swarm reliably chooses
the most valuable site and even when faced with the choice between near-equal
value sites, it makes highly efficient decisions. Value-sensitive
decision-making is enabled by a distributed social effort among the honeybees,
and it leads to decision-making dynamics of the swarm that are remarkably
robust to perturbation and adaptive to change. To explore and generalize these
features to other networks, we design distributed multi-agent network dynamics
that exhibit a pitchfork bifurcation, ubiquitous in biological models of
decision-making. Using tools of nonlinear dynamics we show how the designed
agent-based dynamics recover the high performing value-sensitive
decision-making of the honeybees and rigorously connect investigation of
mechanisms of animal group decision-making to systematic, bio-inspired control
of multi-agent network systems. We further present a distributed adaptive
bifurcation control law and prove how it enhances the network decision-making
performance beyond that observed in swarms
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