Distributed control for geometric pattern formation of large-scale multirobot systems.

Geometric pattern formation is crucial in many tasks involving large-scale multi-agent systems. Examples include mobile agents performing surveillance, swarms of drones or robots, and smart transportation systems. Currently, most control strategies proposed to achieve pattern formation in network systems either show good performance but require expensive sensors and communication devices, or have lesser sensor requirements but behave more poorly.

A network model of Italy shows that intermittent regional strategies can alleviate the COVID-19 epidemic.

The COVID-19 epidemic hit Italy particularly hard, yielding the implementation of strict national lockdown rules. Previous modelling studies at the national level overlooked the fact that Italy is divided into administrative regions which can independently oversee their own share of the Italian National Health Service. Here, we show that heterogeneity between regions is essential to understand the spread of the epidemic and to design effective strategies to control the disease.