Redirecting counter-moving swarms through collision

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework to understand how counter-moving swarms of agents can be redirected after collision, revealing conditions for stable velocity states and scaling laws through theoretical and simulation analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework for analyzing collision and redirection in multi-swarm systems with different parameters and goals, using a rigid-body approximation.

Findings

Redirection depends on the existence of a synchronized stable velocity state.

Scaling laws for scatter-redirection transitions are derived.

Results are validated through particle and robot simulations.

Abstract

Multi-swarm systems, where two or more swarms of mobile agents occupy the same region of space with different parameters and goals, occur in a variety of biological, engineering, and defense applications. Composites of multiple swarms can produce hybrid spatiotemporal patterns, which compared to single swarming systems, are relatively unexplored. In this work, we develop a framework for studying the collision of counter-moving swarms, each with its own preferred, stable velocity before collision. We show that redirection of such swarms after collision occurs when a stable velocity synchronized state of the multi-swarm composite exists. Using a rigid-body approximation, we are able to extract how scatter-redirection transitions scale with swarm parameters in a variety of scenarios from reciprocal and non-reciprocal systems to symmetric and antagonistic parameter values. Our results compare well to simulations of both particle modeled agents and wheeled robots.