Autonomous motion in changing environment, fibrations and reaction mechanisms

TL;DR

This paper extends the formalism of fibrations in configuration spaces to model autonomous system motion in changing environments, introducing reaction mechanisms to handle unpredictable external changes.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of reaction mechanisms as nonlinear infinitesimal lifting functions to manage unpredictable environmental changes.

Findings

Complexity of motion algorithms remains unchanged with known external changes.

Reaction mechanisms effectively handle unpredictable environmental variations.

Nonlinear infinitesimal lifting functions are common and essential in modeling reactions.

Abstract

In this paper we develop further the formalism of fibrations of configuration spaces as a tool for modelling motion of autonomous systems in variable environments. We analyse the situations when the external conditions may change during the motion of the system and analyse two possibilities: (a) when the behaviour of the external conditions is known in advance; and (b) when the future changes of the external conditions are unknown but we can measure the current state and the current velocity of the external conditions, at every moment of time. We prove that in the case (a) the complexity of the motion algorithm is the same as in the case of constant external conditions; this generalises the result of \cite{FGY}. In case (b) we introduce a new concept of a reaction mechanism which allows to take into account unexpected and unpredictable changes in the environment. A reaction mechanism is mathematically an infinitesimal lifting function on a fibre bundle, a nonlinear generalisation of the classical concept of an Ehresmann connection. We illustrate these notions by examples which show that nonlinear infinitesimal lifting function (reaction mechanisms) appear naturally, are inevitable and ubiquitous.