Crystallization and tile separation in the multi-agent systems

Jacques Henri Collet and Jean Fanchon

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2015, vol. 436, issue C, 405-417

Abstract: This paper deals with the self-organization of simple mobile agents confined in a two-dimension rectangular area. Each agent interacts with its neighbors inside an interaction disk and moves following various types of force-driven couplings (e.g. repulsion or attraction). The agents do not know their absolute position, do not exchange messages, have no memory, and no learning capabilities. We first study the self-organization appearing in systems made-up with one sole type of agents, initially generated at random in the terrain. By changing the agent–agent repulsive interaction, we observe five different population reorganizations, namely, grouping, diffusion (that is classical), but especially interesting, crystallization (i.e., the agents group together on the vertices a regular hexagonal lattice), alignment along straight lines, and vortex dynamics. Then, we consider reorganization in systems made-up from two to five types of agents, where each pair of agent types has specific interaction parameters. The main result of this work is to show that, by only changing the agent–agent repulsion rules, one can generate hexagonal or rectangular multi-agent crystals or on the contrary, induce complete separation in regular hexagonal tiles.

Keywords: Mobile agents; Self-organization; Crystallization; Pattern formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437115003830
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:436:y:2015:i:c:p:405-417

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2015.04.015

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().