Controlling anonymous mobile agents with unidirectional locomotion to form formations on a circle

• Published in: Automatica (Oxford) Vol. 50; no. 4; pp. 1100 - 1108
• Main Authors: Wang, Chen, Xie, Guangming, Cao, Ming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2014; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adaptative systems; Agents (artificial intelligence); Applied sciences; Asymptotic properties; Circle formation; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Constraints; Control theory. Systems; Detection, estimation, filtering, equalization, prediction; Distributed control; Exact sciences and technology; Expert systems; Formations; Information, signal and communications theory; Multi-agent system; Reagents; Sampled-data control; Signal and communications theory; Signal, noise; Simulation; Software; Strategy; Telecommunications and information theory; Unidirectional locomotion; Sampled-data control; Distributed control; Multi-agent system; Unidirectional locomotion; Circle formation; Collision; Adaptive control; Constrained optimization; Digital control; Control constraint; Locomotion; Multiagent system; Sampling theory; Cooperation; Mobile agent; Asymptotic approximation
• ISSN: 0005-1098; 1873-2836
• DOI: 10.1016/j.automatica.2014.02.036

We study the circle forming problem in which a group of anonymous mobile agents are required to form a formation when moving on a given circle. The agents are constrained to move in the one-dimensional space of the circle only in the counterclockwise direction, but not the opposite way. Distributed, cooperative, sampled-data control strategies are designed that only take nonnegative values. We prove that the multi-agent system under such constrained control input can be guided to reach the prescribed circle formation asymptotically with the additional guarantee that no collision between agents ever takes place. The theoretical analysis is further validated through simulations.