Committee: 

Dr. Egerstedt, Advisor  

Dr. Wardi, Chair

Dr. Howard

Abstract: The objective of the proposed research is to draw inspiration from human and animal groups in order to develop distributed multi-robot coordination algorithms. While biological inspirations for multi-agent robotics are typically thought of in terms of schools of fish and flocks of birds, we take a more general interpretation and consider human groups as well. Both human groups and animal groups are known to be capable of using local interactions to achieve collective behaviors or decisions. This work aims to understand the driving force behind these interactions and apply the ideas to multi-robot team coordination algorithms. In particular, three factors affecting these interactions are considered, namely heterogeneity, trust, and actions.