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Large-Scale Networks in Engineering and Life Sciences pp 199–224Cite as

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Interacting with Networks of Mobile Agents

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Abstract

How should human operators interact with teams of mobile agents, whose movements are dictated by decentralized and localized interaction laws? This chapter connects the structure of the underlying information exchange network to how easy or hard it is for human operators to influence the behavior of the team. “Influence” is understood both in terms of controllability, which is a point-to-point property, and manipulability, which is an instantaneous influence notion. These two notions both rely on the assumption that the user can exert control over select leader agents, and we contrast this with another approach whereby the agents are modeled as particles suspended in a fluid, which can be “stirred” by the operator. The theoretical developments are coupled with multirobot experiments and human user-studies to support the practical viability and feasibility of the proposed methods.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that if the states were nonscalar, the analysis still holds even though one has to decompose the system dynamics along the different dimensions of the states.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Magnus Egerstedt, Jean-Pierre de la Croix & Peter Kingston

  2. Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Hiroaki Kawashima

Authors
  1. Magnus Egerstedt
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  2. Jean-Pierre de la Croix
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  3. Hiroaki Kawashima
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  4. Peter Kingston
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Magnus Egerstedt .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Magdeburg, Germany

    Peter Benner

  2. Institute for Automation Engineering (IF, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

    Rolf Findeisen

  3. Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Magdeburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany

    Dietrich Flockerzi

  4. Max Planck Inst Dynamics Complex Tech, Magdeburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany

    Udo Reichl

  5. Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Magdeburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany

    Kai Sundmacher

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Egerstedt, M., de la Croix, JP., Kawashima, H., Kingston, P. (2014). Interacting with Networks of Mobile Agents. In: Benner, P., Findeisen, R., Flockerzi, D., Reichl, U., Sundmacher, K. (eds) Large-Scale Networks in Engineering and Life Sciences. Modeling and Simulation in Science, Engineering and Technology. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08437-4_3

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