Group formation and cohesion of active particles with visual perception–dependent motility

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Abstract

Group formation in living systems typically results from a delicate balance of repulsive, aligning, and attractive interactions. We found that a mere motility change of the individuals in response to the visual perception of their peers induces group formation and cohesion. We tested this principle in a real system of active particles whose motilities are controlled by an external feedback loop. For narrow fields of view, individuals gathered into cohesive nonpolarized groups without requiring active reorientations. For wider fields of view, cohesion could be achieved by lowering the response threshold. We expect this motility-induced cohesion mechanism to be relevant not only for the self-organization of living systems, but also for the design of robust and scalable autonomous systems.

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Most cited references 30

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Antoine Bricard, Jean-Baptiste Caussin, Nicolas Desreumaux … (2013)

From the formation of animal flocks to the emergence of coordinated motion in bacterial swarms, populations of motile organisms at all scales display coherent collective motion. This consistent behaviour strongly contrasts with the difference in communication abilities between the individuals. On the basis of this universal feature, it has been proposed that alignment rules at the individual level could solely account for the emergence of unidirectional motion at the group level. This hypothesis has been supported by agent-based simulations. However, more complex collective behaviours have been systematically found in experiments, including the formation of vortices, fluctuating swarms, clustering and swirling. All these (living and man-made) model systems (bacteria, biofilaments and molecular motors, shaken grains and reactive colloids) predominantly rely on actual collisions to generate collective motion. As a result, the potential local alignment rules are entangled with more complex, and often unknown, interactions. The large-scale behaviour of the populations therefore strongly depends on these uncontrolled microscopic couplings, which are extremely challenging to measure and describe theoretically. Here we report that dilute populations of millions of colloidal rolling particles self-organize to achieve coherent motion in a unique direction, with very few density and velocity fluctuations. Quantitatively identifying the microscopic interactions between the rollers allows a theoretical description of this polar-liquid state. Comparison of the theory with experiment suggests that hydrodynamic interactions promote the emergence of collective motion either in the form of a single macroscopic 'flock', at low densities, or in that of a homogenous polar phase, at higher densities. Furthermore, hydrodynamics protects the polar-liquid state from the giant density fluctuations that were hitherto considered the hallmark of populations of self-propelled particles. Our experiments demonstrate that genuine physical interactions at the individual level are sufficient to set homogeneous active populations into stable directed motion.

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P. Romanczuk, M. Bär, W Ebeling … (2012)

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Author and article information

Journal

Title: Science

Abbreviated Title: Science

Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

ISSN (Print): 0036-8075

ISSN (Electronic): 1095-9203

Publication date Created: April 04 2019

Publication date Created: April 05 2019

Publication date (Electronic): April 04 2019

Publication date (Print): April 05 2019

Volume: 364

Issue: 6435

Pages: 70-74

Article

DOI: 10.1126/science.aau5347

PubMed ID: 30948548

SO-VID: 9f93f5df-5bb5-41cf-bc5b-89472f68e24e

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http://www.sciencemag.org/about/science-licenses-journal-article-reuse

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