Titolo seminario:  
Flocking of mobile agents: a functional approach.

Joint work with G. Ferrari-Trecate and M. Gati.  

Abstract:
In the last few years, the problem of understanding when the individual 
actions of interacting agents give rise to a  coordinated behavior
has received a considerable attention in many fields. 
We consider a simple setup, where N agents are connected through a 
communication graph and share "simple" informations like position and 
velocity of the first-neighbors.  We introduce the formalism of Partial 
Difference Equations (PdEs)  on graphs to analyse the behavior of multiple
agent formations and design decentralized control schemes ensuring 
cohesion, collision avoidance and alignement. 
Finally, PdEs "mimic" Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) on graphs 
and  we study them by  introducing functional analysis concepts 
strongly inspired to the corresponding ones arising in PDEs theory.