Coordination of multi-agent leader-follower system with time-varying objective function

This paper aims to introduce a new framework for the distributed control of multi-agent systems with adjustable swarm control objectives. Our goal is twofold: 1) to provide an overview to how time-varying objectives in the control of autonomous systems may be applied to the distributed control of multi-agent systems with variable autonomy level, and 2) to introduce a framework to incorporate the proposed concept to fundamental swarm behaviors such as aggregation and leader tracking. Leader-follower multi-agent systems are considered in this study, and a general form of time-dependent artificial potential function is proposed to describe the varying objectives of the system. Using Lyapunov methods, the stability and boundedness of the agents' trajectories under single order and higher order dynamics are analyzed. Illustrative numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the validity of our results.