Collectives and Complex System Design

1. Summary A collective is a group of self-motivated agents that maximize system performance through the pursuit of local objectives. This paper deals with two aspects of collective design: the application of optimization in the design of collectives, and the use of collectives for engineering design itself, in which multiple individuals or teams design parts of a large-scale system. Examples are drawn from aeronautical engineering, where well-developed models in the many relevant disciplines may be used to analyze and optimize the complete system. The design of aircraft, involving many individuals or organizations, and the formation flight of geese, for example, share many similar features. In each case, individuals must decide on a course of action that must benefit the system as a whole, despite the requirement that they act locally and cannot immediately ascertain the effect of their actions on the entire system. Examples demonstrate how multi-level distributed optimization can be used to achieve optimal system performance while focusing on local degrees of freedom and how a similar approach leads to the optimal V-shaped flock of geese, even when individual birds seek only to maximize their own local goals. Additional applications of these ideas show how collectives may provide new engineering solutions to problems in aerospace design.