A formal analysis of potential energy in a multi-agent system

This paper summarizes a novel framework, called "physicomimetics," for the distributed control of large collections of mobile physical agents in sensor networks. The agents sense and react to virtual forces, which are motivated by natural physics laws. Thus, physicomimetics is founded upon solid scientific principles. Furthermore, this framework provides an effective basis for self-organization, fault-tolerance, and self-repair. Examples are shown of how this framework has been applied to construct regular geometric lattice configurations (distributed sensing grids). Analyses are provided that facilitate system understanding and predictability, including a quantitative analysis of potential energy that provides the capability of setting system parameters based on theoretical laws. Physicomimetics has been implemented both in simulation and on a team of seven mobile robots.