The Dynamics of Interacting Swarms

Swarms are self-organized dynamical coupled agents which evolve from simple rules of communication. They are ubiquitous in nature and becoming more prominent in defense applications. Here we report on a preliminary study of swarm collisions for a swarm model in which each agent is self-propelling but globally communicates with other agents. We generalize previous models by investigating the interacting dynamics when the delay is introduced to the communicating agents. One of our major findings is that interacting swarms are far less likely to flock cohesively if they are coupled with delay. In addition, parameter ranges based on coupling strength, incidence angle of collision, and delay change dramatically for other swarm interactions which result in flocking, milling, and scattering.

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