Bio-inspired density control of multi-agent swarms via leader-follower plasticity

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Maffettone, Gian Carlo, Boldini, Alain, di Bernardo, Mario, Porfiri, Maurizio
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Maffettone, Gian Carlo
Boldini, Alain
di Bernardo, Mario
Porfiri, Maurizio
author_facet Maffettone, Gian Carlo
Boldini, Alain
di Bernardo, Mario
Porfiri, Maurizio
contents The design of control systems for the spatial self-organization of mobile agents is an open challenge across several engineering domains, including swarm robotics and synthetic biology. Here, we propose a bio-inspired leader-follower solution, which is aware of energy constraints of mobile agents and is apt to deal with large swarms. Akin to many natural systems, control objectives are formulated for the entire collective, and leaders and followers are allowed to plastically switch their role in time. We frame a density control problem, modeling the agents' population via a system of nonlinear partial differential equations. This approach allows for a compact description that inherently avoids the curse of dimensionality and improves analytical tractability. We derive analytical guarantees for the existence of desired steady-state solutions and their local stability for one-dimensional and higher-dimensional problems. We numerically validate our control methodology, offering support to the effectiveness, robustness, and versatility of our proposed bio-inspired control strategy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_15781
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bio-inspired density control of multi-agent swarms via leader-follower plasticity
Maffettone, Gian Carlo
Boldini, Alain
di Bernardo, Mario
Porfiri, Maurizio
Systems and Control
The design of control systems for the spatial self-organization of mobile agents is an open challenge across several engineering domains, including swarm robotics and synthetic biology. Here, we propose a bio-inspired leader-follower solution, which is aware of energy constraints of mobile agents and is apt to deal with large swarms. Akin to many natural systems, control objectives are formulated for the entire collective, and leaders and followers are allowed to plastically switch their role in time. We frame a density control problem, modeling the agents' population via a system of nonlinear partial differential equations. This approach allows for a compact description that inherently avoids the curse of dimensionality and improves analytical tractability. We derive analytical guarantees for the existence of desired steady-state solutions and their local stability for one-dimensional and higher-dimensional problems. We numerically validate our control methodology, offering support to the effectiveness, robustness, and versatility of our proposed bio-inspired control strategy.
title Bio-inspired density control of multi-agent swarms via leader-follower plasticity
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15781