Computational issues in systems of mobile entities

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In this project I am interested in the design of deterministic algorithms for groups of computational moving entities. Such entities are identical, extremely simple and individually quite weak; but collectively capable of performing possibly complex tasks. The environment in which the entities operate can be a network or a terrain. In both environments the behaviour of the entities is cyclic: an entity becomes active (asynchronously and independently), it decides where to move based on the protocol, it moves to a location, and it becomes inactive again. What can be done by a team of entities and how efficiently depends on the characteristics of the entities like, for example, their communication media, their ability to see neighbouring entities, their level of synchronization, the possibility to remember the past. Some of the entities' characteristics (for example, locality, obliviousness, and communication) are particularly important and their study could have significant consequences in terms of scalability, efficiency, and fault-tolerance.