Patent ID: 8379967
Filing Date: 2013-02-19
Classification: G05B,G05D

Abstract:
1. A system for controlling a swarm that includes a plurality N of autonomous objects, the system comprising: a processing system configured to compute one or more primitives to be applied to pairs of objects in the swarm, and to combine the primitives for multiple of the pairs of the objects in order to generate higher-level primitives that can result in a desired group behavior of the objects; the processing system further configured to generate a graph of the computed primitives, and identify one or more cliques in the graph; wherein each primitive is a local, pairwise relationship between two objects in the swarm; and a controller configured to cause the one or more computed primitives to be applied between each pair of objects in the swarm, and to cause each object to maximize its respective set of primitives so as to induce the desired group behavior by the objects, the controller further configured to detect the desired group behavior in the swarm by monitoring the primitives computed by the processing system and the cliques identified by the processing system.