Cells and robots. Modeling and control of large-size agent populations (Q2473934)

This interesting monograph is devoted to the study of multi-agent populations of biological cells and robot teams. The motivation of the investigation stems in the key observation that both cells and robots are sophisticated agents with the ability to sense the environment, analyze signals, and act individually, or in cooperation with their teammates. The main objective of the approach is to provide solutions to the problem of how dynamics of an individual agent propagates to the population dynamics. Solutions to this problem involve the understanding of biological data as well as the manipulation (i.e. control) of multi-agent systems such as biological cell populations and large-size robotic teams (including swarms). The original contributions of this book can be summarized in the following points: {\parindent=7mm \begin{itemize}\item[(A)] Development of the micro-agent model of the agent population. This includes \end{itemize}} {\parindent=15mm \begin{itemize}\item[(a1)] a system of partial differential equations describing the state probability density function of a population which can be modeled by a continuous time Markov chain micro-agent; and \item[(a2)] the modeling approach to the parameter uncertainty of the Micro-Agent continuous dynamics. \end{itemize}} {\parindent=7mm \begin{itemize}\item[(B)] Hybrid system approach to the modeling of T-cell receptors (TCR) expression dynamics of an individual T-cell and T-cell populations. As part of the obtained result, a novel data processing algorithm, which is able to reject the T-cell auto-fluorescence from the Flow Cytometry measurements, has been developed. \item[(C)] Modeling a large-size robotic population, including the formulation of an optimal control problem taking the population to a desired location with the maximal probability; the algorithm for computing numerical optimal control for this problem. \end{itemize}} These results constitute possible steps to the future theoretical development of the modeling framework, the modeling of biological cell populations, and their potential application to the modeling and control of large-size robotic populations. This original monograph has a wide interest for scholars in the area of multi-agent systems, including computational biology, biometrical engineering, nano-robotics, and even aerospace engineering.