@ARTICLE {,
AUTHOR = "Tad Hogg and Bernardo A. Huberman",
TITLE = "Controlling Smart Matter",
JOURNAL = "Smart Materials and Structures",
VOLUME = "7",
PAGES = "R1--R14",
YEAR = "1998"}
Abstract
We study the behavior of several organizations for distributed control
of unstable physical systems and show how a hierarchical organization is
a reasonable compromise between rapid local responses with simple
communication and the use of global knowledge. This holds not only in
ideal situations but also when imperfections and delays are present in
the system. We also introduce a new control organization, the
multihierarchy, and show it is better than a hierarchy in achieving
stability. The multihierarchy also has a position invariant response
that can control disturbances at the appropriate scale and location.
Available as Los Alamos preprint cond-mat/9611024.