Directing Chemotaxis-Based Spatial Self-Organization via Biased, Random Initial Conditions

Abstract: Inspired by the chemotaxis interaction of living cells, we have developed an agent-based approach for self-organizing shape formation. Since all our simulations begin with a different uniform random configuration and our agents move stochastically, it has been observed that the self-organization process may form two or more stable final configurations. These differing configurations may be characterized via statistical moments of the agents' locations. In order to direct the agents to robustly form one specific configuration, we generate biased initial conditions whose statistical moments are related to moments of the desired configuration. With this approach, we are able to successfully direct the aggregating swarms to produced a desired macroscopic shape, starting from randomized initial conditions with controlled statistical properties.