College of Information and Control Engineering, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi'an 710055, People's Republic of China.
School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, People's Republic of China.
J R Soc Interface. 2023 Jul;20(204):20230176. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2023.0176. Epub 2023 Jul 19.
A widely mentioned but not experimentally confirmed view (known as the 'criticality hypothesis') argues that biological swarm systems gain optimal responsiveness to perturbations and information processing capabilities by operating near the critical state where an ordered-to-disordered state transition occurs. However, various factors can induce the ordered-disordered transition, and the explicit relationship between these factors and the criticality is still unclear. Here, we present an experimental validation for the criticality hypothesis by employing real programmable swarm-robotic systems (up to 50 robots) governed by Vicsek-like interactions, subject to time-varying stimulus-response and hazard avoidance. We find that (i) not all ordered-disordered motion transitions correspond to the functional advantages for groups; (ii) collective response of groups is maximized near the critical state induced by alignment weight or scale rather than noise and other non-alignment factors; and (iii) those non-alignment factors act to highlight the functional advantages of alignment-induced criticality. These results suggest that the adjustability of velocity or directional coupling between individuals plays an essential role in the acquisition of maximizing collective response by criticality. Our results contribute to understanding the adjustment strategies of animal interactions from a perspective of criticality and provide insights into the design and control of swarm robotics.
一个广为提及但尚未经过实验证实的观点（称为“临界性假说”）认为，生物群体系统通过在有序到无序状态转变发生的临界状态下运作，获得对扰动和信息处理能力的最佳响应。然而，各种因素都可以诱导有序到无序的转变，这些因素与临界性之间的明确关系尚不清楚。在这里，我们通过使用受 Vicsek 类相互作用控制的真实可编程群体机器人系统（最多 50 个机器人），并对其施加时变刺激-响应和危险回避，对临界性假说进行了实验验证。我们发现：（i）并非所有的有序到无序的运动转变都对应于群体的功能优势；（ii）群体的集体响应在由对齐权重或规模诱导的临界状态附近最大化，而不是噪声和其他非对齐因素；（iii）这些非对齐因素起到了突出对齐诱导临界性的功能优势的作用。这些结果表明，个体之间速度或方向耦合的可调节性在通过临界性获得最大化集体响应方面起着至关重要的作用。我们的研究结果有助于从临界性的角度理解动物相互作用的调整策略，并为群体机器人的设计和控制提供了新的思路。
