The study of flocking in biological systems has identified conditions for self-organized collective behavior, inspiring the development of decentralized strategies to coordinate the dynamics of swarms of drones and other autonomous vehicles. Previous research has focused primarily on identical (or nearly identical) agents, owing to the widely held assumption that inter-individual differences inhibit consensus. In this talk, we challenge this assumption by exploring the role of heterogeneity among agents and demonstrating that suitable inter-individual differences can in fact promote consensus. We show that this counterintuitive effect can be leveraged to improve the performance and stability of various collective tasks, including flock formation, target tracking, and obstacle maneuvering. Finally, we conclude the talk by establishing system disorder as a mechanism to promote collective behavior across a wide variety of systems beyond flocking dynamics.
