Control of Many Agents Using Few Instructions

This paper considers the problem of controlling a group of agents under the constraint that every agent must be given the same control input. This problem is relevant for the control of mobile micro-robots that all receive the same power and control signals through an underlying substrate. Despite this restriction, several examples in simulation demonstrate that it is possible to get a group of micro-robots to perform useful tasks. All of these tasks are derived by thinking about the relationships between robots, rather than about their individual states.

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