Collaborative Research: Mechanical Communication for Multi-agent Systems

鱼群游动可以利用与邻近诱导流的流体动力学相互作用。大肠杆菌分泌并推动周围的介质，使用鞭毛成群蜿蜒，心脏细胞对它们的弹性环境施加力以影响细胞迁移。这些多智能体生物系统中的每一个都提供了一个例子，其中集体行为来自浸没在共同介质（流体或弹性基底）中的相似主体之间的低水平相互作用。例如，鱼群中的鱼将动量（信息被传输）传递到周围的流体（信息流）中，相邻的鱼感受到可能影响运动的物理变化（信息被接收）。我们把这种通过环境媒体进行信息传递的机制称为机械通信。在这里，信息流以环境动态的形式拥有自己的动态。然而，目前尚不清楚个体代理应该如何控制它们的运动，以从这种机械通信中受益。该项目将通过理论分析和移动的机器人车辆的台式实验相结合来解决这一挑战。 该项目的重点是关节式机器人的机械通信，主动或被动地改变其内部形状，同时移动和通信。在这种多智能体系统中，个体智能体如何在运动和机械通信之间进行权衡是这项工作的主要动力。为了解决这一问题，信息交换将分为三个关键模块：发送、接收和转发。在这样做的时候，工作试图回答如何做一个系统：1）Locomote传输信息？2)传递信息来诱导运动？3)Locomote接收信息？4)接受信息来诱导运动？这项工作的重点是了解机械耦合和非耦合信息交换如何影响这些问题。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

Fish swimming in schools could exploit hydrodynamic interactions with neighbor-induced flows. E coli bacteria secrete and push against a surrounding medium using flagella to meander in swarms, and cardiac cells exert forces on their elastic environments to influence cell migration. Each of these multi-agent biological systems provides an example wherein a collective behavior emerges from low-level interactions between similar bodies immersed in a common medium, either fluid or elastic substrate. For example, fish in a school impart momentum (information is transmitted) into their surrounding fluid (information flows) and the neighboring fish feel resultant physical changes that may impact locomotion (information is received). We term the mechanism for information transfer through ambient media mechanical communication. Here, information flow possesses dynamics of its own in the form of environment dynamics. However, it is not clear how individual agents should control their movement to benefit from this mechanical communication. This project will address this challenge through a combination of theoretical analysis and benchtop experiments with mobile robotic vehicles. This project focuses on mechanical communication for articulated robots that actively or passively change their internal shape to simultaneously locomote and communicate. How individual agents within such multi-agent systems tradeoff between locomotion and mechanical communication is a prime motivator of the work. To address this tradeoff, exchange of information will be separated into three key blocks: transmit, receive, and locomote. In doing so, the work seeks to answer how does a system: 1) Locomote to transmit information? 2) Transmit information to induce locomotion? 3) Locomote to receive information? 4) Receive information to induce locomotion? A focus of this work is to understand how mechanical coupling and non-locomoting information exchange impact these questions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.