Flocking Agents with Varying Interconnection Topology

The work of this paper is inspired by the flocking phenomenon observed in Reynolds (1987). We introduce a class of local control laws for a group of mobile agents that result in: (i) global alignment of their velocity vectors, (ii) convergence of their speeds to a common one, (iii) collision avoidance, and (iv) local minimization of the agents artificial potential energy. These are made possible through local control action by exploiting the algebraic graph theoretic properties of the underlying interconnection graph. Algebraic connectivity affects the performance and robustness properties of the overall closed loop system. We show how the stability of the flocking motion of the group is directly associated with the connectivity properties of the interconnection network and is robust to arbitrary switching of the network topology.

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