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Main Authors: Aguzzi, Gianluca, Casadei, Roberto, Viroli, Mirko
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10969
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author Aguzzi, Gianluca
Casadei, Roberto
Viroli, Mirko
author_facet Aguzzi, Gianluca
Casadei, Roberto
Viroli, Mirko
contents Swarm behaviour engineering is an area of research that seeks to investigate methods and techniques for coordinating computation and action within groups of simple agents to achieve complex global goals like pattern formation, collective movement, clustering, and distributed sensing. Despite recent progress in the analysis and engineering of swarms (of drones, robots, vehicles), there is still a need for general design and implementation methods and tools that can be used to define complex swarm behaviour in a principled way. To contribute to this quest, this article proposes a new field-based coordination approach, called MacroSwarm, to design and program swarm behaviour in terms of reusable and fully composable functional blocks embedding collective computation and coordination. Based on the macroprogramming paradigm of aggregate computing, MacroSwarm builds on the idea of expressing each swarm behaviour block as a pure function, mapping sensing fields into actuation goal fields, e.g., including movement vectors. In order to demonstrate the expressiveness, compositionality, and practicality of MacroSwarm as a framework for swarm programming, we perform a variety of simulations covering common patterns of flocking, pattern formation, and collective decision-making. The implications of the inherent self-stabilisation properties of field-based computations in MacroSwarm are discussed, which formally guarantee some resilience properties and guided the design of the library.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_10969
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MacroSwarm: A Field-based Compositional Framework for Swarm Programming
Aguzzi, Gianluca
Casadei, Roberto
Viroli, Mirko
Artificial Intelligence
Logic in Computer Science
Software Engineering
Swarm behaviour engineering is an area of research that seeks to investigate methods and techniques for coordinating computation and action within groups of simple agents to achieve complex global goals like pattern formation, collective movement, clustering, and distributed sensing. Despite recent progress in the analysis and engineering of swarms (of drones, robots, vehicles), there is still a need for general design and implementation methods and tools that can be used to define complex swarm behaviour in a principled way. To contribute to this quest, this article proposes a new field-based coordination approach, called MacroSwarm, to design and program swarm behaviour in terms of reusable and fully composable functional blocks embedding collective computation and coordination. Based on the macroprogramming paradigm of aggregate computing, MacroSwarm builds on the idea of expressing each swarm behaviour block as a pure function, mapping sensing fields into actuation goal fields, e.g., including movement vectors. In order to demonstrate the expressiveness, compositionality, and practicality of MacroSwarm as a framework for swarm programming, we perform a variety of simulations covering common patterns of flocking, pattern formation, and collective decision-making. The implications of the inherent self-stabilisation properties of field-based computations in MacroSwarm are discussed, which formally guarantee some resilience properties and guided the design of the library.
title MacroSwarm: A Field-based Compositional Framework for Swarm Programming
topic Artificial Intelligence
Logic in Computer Science
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10969