A RULE BASED ALGORITHM THAT PRODUCES EXPONENTIALLY STABLE FORMATIONS OF AUTONOMOUS AGENTS

A two-dimensional discrete time, nonlinear logic-based control algorithm used in simulation is shown to produce an exponentially stable swarm formation. Each agent in the swarm is subject to two control regimes, the far-field conditions and the nearfield conditions. These control regimes are defined by the state of each agent in the swarm formation. The control algorithm is also a leader-follower type algorithm so that each follower in a leader-follower pair becomes the leader for another leader-follower pair, and so on. The formation leader is the agent that has no leader to follow; this decision is made by the control algorithm and is based on the initial conditions of the swarm. The process by which the initially randomly distributed swarm forms a stable ‘V’ flight formation is simulated and the final formation, when all the agents are governed by the near-field control regime, is shown to be exponentially stable. The control algorithm described herein is distributed since each agent needs only position information of the agents that are in front of it to decide it’s control action and each agent acts autonomously since it makes it’s control decision without knowing what the other agents in the swarm are going to do.

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