Abstract
In this talk, I'll describe a deterministic particle method for the weighted porous medium equation, which relies on the Wassertein gradient flow formulation of the PDE, and present recent results concerning its convergence. I will also discuss applications to robotic swarming. Indeed, it turns out that thinking of the "particles" as "robotic bees" allows the numerical method to be adapted into an algorithm for, say, getting robotic bees to pollinate flowers in a field. This is based on joint work with Katy Craig, Karthik Elamvazhuthi, and Matt Haberland.