Aerial and marine robots operate in a fluid medium which carries significant information not often utilized in path planning and cooperation of such robots. Motivated by this observation, we believe that modeling the macroscopic dynamics of a multi-agent system using the vast and historically grounded knowledge of fluid dynamics will open up many opportunities for a better understanding and subsequent enhancement of the behavior of such multi-agent systems. In addition, by including the dynamics of background flows, significant improvement in mobility, reachability and success rate can be expected in applications such as dynamical target tracking, foreign threat interception, and large-scale environmental sensing. Starting with the consideration of the underlying background flows and the sensor network as two tightly coupled dynamical systems, we leverage the fluid dynamical description of a system to understand the macroscopic motions of the sensor network as a continuum. We present designs for cooperative control strategies governing both local interactions within the multiagent systems and the emergent swarm behaviors. The proposed fluid-based swarm modeling and control scheme is well-suited for aerial or marine missions including multi-vehicle transportation, cooperative surveillance, collaborative target tracking and capturing, etc. More specifically, we will be focusing on the following research tasks:
-stability analysis and adaptive control of multi-agent systems modeled as continuous fluids;
-multi-agent system dynamics coupled with background ow dynamics;
-experimental evaluation with mobile aerial vehicle swarms

The design and development of highly-maneuverable aircraft has been a long-standing engineering challenge. This challenge presents itself in almost all flight regimes, from supersonic fighter jets down to low-speed, smaller-scale unmanned aircraft. Despite the very different operating conditions, there is at least one common feature among aircraft designs aiming to provide very agile, yet stable, flight. Namely, the planforms (the shape and layout of an airplane’s wing) of such aircraft are of low aspect ratio. Recent studies suggest that the aerodynamic and gust-response of such low aspect ratio fliers are significantly different than larger flyers and not well understood. This issue constitutes a critical gap in aerial vehicle development, and this research project addresses a critical gap in the development of reliable and fully controllable aerial drones. The researchers will also enhance course curricula with results from this research, and a course on unsteady low Reynolds number aerodynamics will be developed. A summer program is proposed that will enable local high school students to learn aerodynamics and flight concepts and to participate in a design/build/operate competition integrating fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, and aircraft design.