Water floating self-assembling agents

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel model of autonomous floating agents which can self-assemble on a water surface. We focus especially on the shape of the agent, which is essential as a factor of aggregation but difficult to deal with as finite states. After several experiments, a unique self-assembling behavior was observed by exploiting several physical-level forces; 6 agents gather into a cluster and form a specific pattern, which is unique to the configuration. This is considered crucial to achieve morphogenesis of a multi-agent system, of which we think as a hierarchical aggregation. The results shown here provide a good starting point for speculation about the level of autonomy of a agent in the complex environment when the system creates a self-assembling pattern. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.