Authors:
            
                    Guillaume Sartoretti
                    
                        
                    
                     and
                
                    Max-Olivier Hongler
                    
                        
                    
                    
                
        
        
            Affiliation:
            
                    
                        
                    
                    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
                
        
        
        
        
        
             Keyword(s):
            Rank-based Brownian Motions, Heterogeneous Autonomous Agents, Soft-control of Swarms, Exact Analytic Solvable Models, Super-diffusive Shill Agent, Flocking.
        
        
            
                Related
                    Ontology
                    Subjects/Areas/Topics:
                
                        Agents
                    ; 
                        Artificial Intelligence
                    ; 
                        Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
                    ; 
                        Autonomous Systems
                    ; 
                        Collective Intelligence
                    ; 
                        Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
                    ; 
                        Enterprise Information Systems
                    ; 
                        Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
                    ; 
                        Knowledge-Based Systems
                    ; 
                        Multi-Agent Systems
                    ; 
                        Self Organizing Systems
                    ; 
                        Software Engineering
                    ; 
                        Symbolic Systems
                    
            
        
        
            
                Abstract: 
                We analytically study the collective dynamics of mutually interacting heterogeneous agents evolving in a random environment. Our formal framework consists of a collection of N scalar drifted Brownian motions (BM) diffusing on R. The mutual interactions are introduced via a ranked-based, real-time mechanism always endowing the laggard (i.e the agent with the leftmost position) with an extra positive drift. The extra drift generates a net tendency for any agents not to remain the laggard of the society. For well chosen individual and extra laggard’s drifts, the agents organize with time to flock towards a tight and stable travelling spatial pattern. For a population of (N −1) identical agents and an atypical fellow (called hereafter the shill), we are able to analytically discuss the dynamics. In particular we exhibit how a single turbulent shill, stylized here by a ballistic diffusion process, can destroy the cohesion of a swarm. Conversely, we also analytically show how a single shil
                l is able to safely pilot a whole swarm to avoid an obstacle, via interactions with its fellows. A series of simulations experiments comfort our analytic findings.
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