Decentralized Cohesive Motion Control of Multi-Agent Formations

This paper presents a set of decentralized control laws for the cohesive motion of 2-dimensional multi-agent formations. We consider rigid and constraint-consistent formations that can be modeled by directed graphs. We analyze both of the two main hierarchical structures for such 2-dimensional formations: The leader-follower and the three-coleader structures. For each structure, we derive a control scheme that moves a given rigid and constraint-consistent formation whose initial position and orientation are specified to a new desired position and orientation cohesively, i.e., without deforming the shape of the formation during the motion. We elaborate our designs considering the path smoothness, chattering, and agent kinematics issues and demonstrate their effectiveness via a set of simulation results. Manuscript received February 15, 2006. This work is supported by National ICT Australia, which is funded by the Australian Government's Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and the Australian Research Council through the Backing Australia's Ability Initiative.