Collective navigation of cargo-carrying swarms

Abstract

Much effort has been devoted to the study of swarming and collective navigation of microorganisms, insects, fish, birds and other organisms, as well as multi-agent simulations and to the study of real robots. It is well known that insect swarms can carry cargo. The studies here are motivated by a less well-known phenomenon: cargo transport by bacteria swarms. We begin with a concise review of how bacteria swarms carry natural, micrometre-scale objects larger than the bacteria (e.g. fungal spores) as well as man-made beads and capsules (for drug delivery). A comparison of the trajectories of virtual beads in simulations (using different putative coupling between the virtual beads and the bacteria) with the observed trajectories of transported fungal spores implies the existence of adaptable coupling. Motivated by these observations, we devised new, multi-agent-based studies of cargo transport by agent swarms. As a first step, we extended previous modelling of collective navigation of simple bacteriainspired agents in complex terrain, using three putative models of agent-cargo coupling. We found that cargo-carrying swarms can navigate efficiently in a complex landscape. We further investigated how the stability, elasticity and other features of agent-cargo bonds influence the collective motion and the transport of the cargo, and found sharp phase shifts and dual successful strategies for cargo delivery. Further understanding of such mechanisms may provide valuable clues to understand cargo-transport by smart swarms of other organisms as well as by man-made swarming robots.

Unusual swelling of a polymer in a bacterial bath

“…But a realted set-up are bacteria close to a liquid-air interface which are standardly considered in experiments, see e.g. [56,60,61]. The latter interface is flexible but under tension.…”

“…Our case of a flexible polymer chain is therefore one of the simplest key examples to proceed along this important direction. Third, in general, the set-up we are proposing is realizable in experiments and relevant for biological systems where swarms of bacteria are moving close to flexible objects like at water-air interfaces [56][57][58][59][60][61]. Our two-dimensional model can indeed be realized e.g.…”

From organized internal traffic to collective navigation of bacterial swarms

“…Paenibacillus vortex is a Gram-positive bacterium that is a highly effective swarmer with its progress over agar plates aided by collective secretion of surfactants [8][9][10]. This bacterium survives in the complex and challenging environment surrounding plant roots (the rhizosphere).…”

Collective motion in biological systems

“…We conclude the present issue with a recently discovered phenomenon in a swarm of social bacteria, which is their ability to collectively transport biological cargo over long distances. In their paper, Shklarsh et al [33] develop a new class of computer models to study cargo-carrying bacteria-inspired agents. They investigate how the features of agent-cargo bonds influence the collective motion and the transport of the cargo and they compare the simulation results to the experiments.…”