Work

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

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: 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 global 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.

Source: Automatica

DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2026.112924

Authors: Gian Carlo Maffettone, Alain Boldini, Mario di Bernardo, Maurizio Porfiri

Institutions: Scuola Superiore Meridionale, New York Institute of Technology, University of Naples Federico II, New York University

Language: English

Topic: Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems

Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,760

Funders: National Sleep Foundation, Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca, Ministero dell'Istruzione e del Merito