How the engineering of Swarming Behaviors could be drawing on Social Sciences

Abstract. Emergent behavior in swarming and self-organizing systems can be systematically studied. This paper proposes to draw on excisting conceptual frameworks from the social sciences to do so. To this end, the article proposes a theoretical framework that treats local agent behaviors as “policies” (a concept borrowed from social sciences) and uses insights from policy analysis and systems analysis (established practices in social sciences) – such as feedback loops, institutional constraints, and emergent norms – to inform the design of robotic swarms (specifically: homogeneous swarms of autonomous platforms operating in 2D with communication constraints). To illustrate this, two canonical tasks, Area Exploration and Area Coverage, are used as case studies. By examining these tasks through a social science lens, we illustrate how mechanism design principles, phase transitions, and decentralized coordination strategies contribute to robust emergent dynamics. This has its practical limitations and we discuss these as well.