Abstract

The ideas developed in this thesis have originated from several distinct events in my student life at Georgia Tech. These events include some thought provoking discussions, frequent travels and collaborations with some very intelligent researchers. The bulk of this work concerns the study of decentralized coordination schemes in large networks of mobile agents, using local interactions. I decided to invest my efforts into this topic after carefully realizing the potential of its applications and the recognition that there has been a lack of a solid mathematical foundation for studying such coordination problems. During the course of this work, several other researchers have focused their attention on this area, and have produced some elegant results. This thesis, however, differs from almost all other works in many respects. The use of topological methods and an emphasis on the relationship

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