Leading a Swarm with Signals

The prevalence of autonomous agents has raised the need for agents to cooperate without having the ability to coordinate their moves in advance, or communicate explicitly. This is referred to as ad-hoc teamwork. Prior work in this field has examined the possibility of leading a flock of simple, swarm-like, agents to a desired behavior that maximizes joint group utility, using informed agents that act within the flock. In this work we examine the problem of leading a flock of agents using signals. In this problem, the leading agents are equipped with a tool allowing them to send a simple signal to the flock, “calling” them to act in a desired way. However, the agents may misinterpret the signal with some probability, and head to the opposite direction. We examine the best behavior for a leading agent, that is, deciding when to signal, which depends on the signaling range of the leader, the probability of the signal misinterpretation, the sensing range of the flocking agents, and their current behavior. We extend the analysis to multiple leading agents, and show that their location within the flock also plays a role in the outcome. Finally, we examine the use of signals by leading a swarm of agents in the dispersion problem, where the team’s goal is to spread in the environment and demonstrate the limitation of signals. Specifically, we show that signals may have no influence on the performance of the swarm, even if they are perfectly interpreted.