As Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) become increasingly involved in every aspect of everyday life the need to maintain reliability and resilience within these systems grows. However, in equal measure bad actors wishing to maliciously control or alter these systems are growing in both scale and capability. Thus, there is a present need for control schemes and agent behaviors that provide security against these threats while also avoiding large degradation in system performance as a tradeoff. Current research has covered a wide breadth of avenues and strategies that provide measurable resilience to faulted agents. However, these strategies often require group consensus, specialized observer agents, or identification of faulted agents, which can weaken overall system performance. When looking for efficient solutions to engineering problems one possible solution space is in the form of Biologically Inspired Design (BID), or the study of nature to apply to engineering. Often BID provides unique and more efficient ways of approaching engineering problems. As such, this dissertation utilizes BID with a focus on insects, which are analogous to a MAS context, to improve system resilience to contagious faults.
After identifying strategies insects use to resist disease and infection five MAS behaviors for individual agents were created. These strategies were then tested in multiple simulation environments and physical robotic swarms. Data from these tests show that these biological strategies are often far superior to the control in both contagious fault resilience and task completion.
","abstract_html":"<p>As Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) become increasingly involved in every aspect of everyday life the need to maintain reliability and resilience within these systems grows. However, in equal measure bad actors wishing to maliciously control or alter these systems are growing in both scale and capability. Thus, there is a present need for control schemes and agent behaviors that provide security against these threats while also avoiding large degradation in system performance as a tradeoff. Current research has covered a wide breadth of avenues and strategies that provide measurable resilience to faulted agents. However, these strategies often require group consensus, specialized observer agents, or identification of faulted agents, which can weaken overall system performance. When looking for efficient solutions to engineering problems one possible solution space is in the form of Biologically Inspired Design (BID), or the study of nature to apply to engineering. Often BID provides unique and more efficient ways of approaching engineering problems. As such, this dissertation utilizes BID with a focus on insects, which are analogous to a MAS context, to improve system resilience to contagious faults.</p> <p>After identifying strategies insects use to resist disease and infection five MAS behaviors for individual agents were created. These strategies were then tested in multiple simulation environments and physical robotic swarms. Data from these tests show that these biological strategies are often far superior to the control in both contagious fault resilience and task completion.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Hand, James E."],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science","degree_level":"Dissertation - Open Access","degree_discipline":"Electrical Engineering and Computer Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2026,"date_issued":"2026-04-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2026-04-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:26:22Z","subjects":["Multi-Agent Systems","Biologically Inspired Design","Robotics","Swarm Systems","Swarm Control","Faulted Agents","Controls and Control Theory","Other Electrical and Computer Engineering","Other Engineering","Systems and Communications","Systems Engineering"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://commons.erau.edu/edt/968","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Hand, James E."]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation - Open Access"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Multi-Agent Systems","Biologically Inspired Design","Robotics","Swarm Systems","Swarm Control","Faulted Agents","Controls and Control Theory","Other Electrical and Computer Engineering","Other Engineering","Systems and Communications","Systems Engineering"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://commons.erau.edu/edt/968"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["As Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) become increasingly involved in every aspect of everyday life the need to maintain reliability and resilience within these systems grows. However, in equal measure bad actors wishing to maliciously control or alter these systems are growing in both scale and capability. Thus, there is a present need for control schemes and agent behaviors that provide security against these threats while also avoiding large degradation in system performance as a tradeoff. Current research has covered a wide breadth of avenues and strategies that provide measurable resilience to faulted agents. However, these strategies often require group consensus, specialized observer agents, or identification of faulted agents, which can weaken overall system performance. When looking for efficient solutions to engineering problems one possible solution space is in the form of Biologically Inspired Design (BID), or the study of nature to apply to engineering. Often BID provides unique and more efficient ways of approaching engineering problems. As such, this dissertation utilizes BID with a focus on insects, which are analogous to a MAS context, to improve system resilience to contagious faults.
After identifying strategies insects use to resist disease and infection five MAS behaviors for individual agents were created. These strategies were then tested in multiple simulation environments and physical robotic swarms. Data from these tests show that these biological strategies are often far superior to the control in both contagious fault resilience and task completion.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Insect Inspired Behavioral Strategies for Improving Multi-Agent System Resilience in the Presence of Contagious Faults"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:creator":["Hand, James E."],"dc:description.abstract":["As Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) become increasingly involved in every aspect of everyday life the need to maintain reliability and resilience within these systems grows. However, in equal measure bad actors wishing to maliciously control or alter these systems are growing in both scale and capability. Thus, there is a present need for control schemes and agent behaviors that provide security against these threats while also avoiding large degradation in system performance as a tradeoff. Current research has covered a wide breadth of avenues and strategies that provide measurable resilience to faulted agents. However, these strategies often require group consensus, specialized observer agents, or identification of faulted agents, which can weaken overall system performance. When looking for efficient solutions to engineering problems one possible solution space is in the form of Biologically Inspired Design (BID), or the study of nature to apply to engineering. Often BID provides unique and more efficient ways of approaching engineering problems. As such, this dissertation utilizes BID with a focus on insects, which are analogous to a MAS context, to improve system resilience to contagious faults.
After identifying strategies insects use to resist disease and infection five MAS behaviors for individual agents were created. These strategies were then tested in multiple simulation environments and physical robotic swarms. Data from these tests show that these biological strategies are often far superior to the control in both contagious fault resilience and task completion.
"],"dc:identifier":["https://commons.erau.edu/edt/968"],"dc:subject":["Multi-Agent Systems","Biologically Inspired Design","Robotics","Swarm Systems","Swarm Control","Faulted Agents","Controls and Control Theory","Other Electrical and Computer Engineering","Other Engineering","Systems and Communications","Systems Engineering"],"dc:title":["Insect Inspired Behavioral Strategies for Improving Multi-Agent System Resilience in the Presence of Contagious Faults"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation - Open Access"],"thesis:degree_name":["Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:26:22Z"}