Research Projects

Emergence of ordered patterns in the systems which consist of a large number of interacting individuals is of long-standing interest for the scientists from different domains ranging from natural sciences to social sciences. Understanding and developing the methods which lead to programmable and reconfigurable assembly in a group of interacting units is of fundamental and technological relevance for physicists, biologists and engineers. Dynamic systems form patterns while dissipating the energy are of particular interest for understanding the emergence of collective behaviour in complex systems. Here, we propose to study the formation of programmable and reconfigurable assemblies in the large group of small-scale mobile building blocks. The building blocks, proposed here, are battery powered and have their own individual dynamics and capabilities of interacting with other blocks due to the novel features inscribed in their shape, body and material. The interactions proposed here will be in the form of magnetic forces and the interplay between attractive and repulsive magnetic interactions can result in the emergence of a wide variety of collective states. The emergence of these patterns will be quantified on the basis of information-based measures. The pathways that lead to self-organization of different patterns will be identified using the network approach. The tools available in statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics will be used to quantify the dynamics of such patterns. This controlled system should lead to a better understanding of formation of dynamics patterns in the complex systems and help in exploring the out-of-equilibrium phenomena.