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Multiagent flocking with formation in a constrained environment

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Abstract

We consider the problem of controlling a group of mobile agents to form a designated formation while flocking within a constrained environment. We first propose a potential field based method to drive the agents to move in connection with their neighbors, and regulate their relative positions to achieve the specific formation. The communication topology is preserved during the motion. We then extend the method to flocking with environmental constraints. Stability properties are analyzed to guarantee that all agents eventually form the desired formation while flocking, and flock safely without collision with the environment boundary. We verify our algorithm through simulations on a group of agents performing maximum coverage flocking and traveling through an unknown constrained environment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Castle Point, Hoboken, NJ, 07030, USA

    Yao Lu & Yi Guo

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Zhaoyang Dong

Authors
  1. Yao Lu
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  2. Yi Guo
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  3. Zhaoyang Dong
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yao Lu.

Additional information

Yao LU received the B.S. degree from the Department of Precision Instruments and Mechanology at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2005, and the M.Phil. degree in Electrical Engineering from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China, in 2007. She is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, USA. Her research interests include nonlinear control systems, multiagent systems, and collective behavior of mobile robots. She is a student member of IEEE.

Yi GUO received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Xi’an University of Technology, China, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. She obtained the Ph.D. degree from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1999. From 2000 to 2002, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She was a visiting assistant professor at University of Central Florida from 2002 to 2005. Since 2005, she has been an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. Her main research interests are nonlinear control systems, autonomous mobile robots, reconfigurable sensor networks, and control of nanoscale systems. She served in program committees of a number of IEEE Conferences including the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation and 2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. She is a senior member of IEEE.

Zhaoyang DONG obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1999. He is currently with Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He previously held academic positions with the University of Queensland, Australia and National University of Singapore. He also held industrial positions with Powerlink Queensland, and Transend Networks, Tasmania, Australia. His research interest includes power system planning, power system stability and control, load modeling, electricity market, and computational intelligence and its application in power engineering.

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Lu, Y., Guo, Y. & Dong, Z. Multiagent flocking with formation in a constrained environment. J. Control Theory Appl. 8, 151–159 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11768-010-0008-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11768-010-0008-9

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