Synchronization of the Coupled Swarm Agents’ Movement Interacting by the Thermal Motion Equivalent Method

One of the directions of development of methods for group control of swarm agents is formation. Formation of agents is useful in solving transport problems, navigation problems and others. Currently, there are various approaches for controlling agent formations such as virtual leader method, vector method and potential field method. However, these methods usually show good results only under certain conditions and tasks. One of the methods of group control is the thermal motion equivalent method, the current development of which provides the Brownian character of the agents’ motion. Mutual relative energetically inefficient oscillations arise between the agents when the method is used in the formation problem. The synchronization of the agents’ motion proposed in the paper eliminates the mutual oscillations and preserves the swarm stability. One of the advantages of the proposed controller is the absence of the need for complete information about the system. The workability of the proposed solution is demonstrated by numerical simulation using a simplified linear model of the agent - a quadrocopter. The numerical simulations conducted with a linear quadcopter model demonstrate the method’s effectiveness, even when facing external disturbances and interacting with other autonomous agents.