Emergent Behavior in Swarms with On-board Sensing

This work explores a collection of universal global inputs (UGIs) that can be applied to a swarm of agents with only mild sensing and communication requirements to induce various emergent behaviors. The agents are not assumed to have any global positioning beyond orientation and they require no outgoing communication. This ensures that the agents are inexpensive and there is no chance of overwhelming the available bandwidth as additional agents are added. Using just simple UGIs, various useful behaviors are demonstrated through simulation. A physical agent is also built to demonstrate the attainable nature of the agent's requirements.