In a recent Physical Review Letters paper, Vicsek et. al. propose a simple but compelling discrete-time model of n autonomous agents fi.e., points or particlesg all moving in the plane with the same speed but with dierent headings. Each agent's heading is updated using a local rule based on the average of its own heading plus the headings of its \neighbors." In their paper, Vicsek et. al. provide simulation results which demonstrate that the nearest neighbor rule they are studying can cause all agents to eventually move in the same direction despite the absence of centralized coordination and despite the fact that each agent's set of nearest neighbors change with time as the system evolves. This paper provides a theoretical explanation for this observed behavior. In addition, convergence results are derived for several other similarly inspired models.

The generalized spectral radius, also known under the name of joint spectral radius, or (after taking logarithms) maximal Lyapunov exponent of a discrete inclusion is examined. We present a new proof for a result of Barabanov, which states that for irreducible sets of matrices an extremal norm always exists. This approach lends itself easily to the analysis of further properties of the generalized spectral radius. We prove that the generalized spectral radius is locally Lipschitz continuous on the space of compact irreducible sets of matrices and show a strict monotonicity property of the generalized spectral radius. Sufficient conditions for the existence of extremal norms are obtained.