Network Connectivity Preserving Formation Stabilization and Obstacle Avoidance via a Decentralized Controller

A decentralized control method is developed to enable a group of agents to achieve a desired global configuration while maintaining global network connectivity and avoiding obstacles, using only local feedback and no radio communication between the agents for navigation. By modeling the interaction among the agents as a graph, and given a connected initial graph with a desired neighborhood between agents, the developed method ensures the desired communication links remain connected for all time. To guide the agents to a desired configuration while avoiding obstacles, a decentralized controller is developed based on the navigation function formalism. By proving that the proposed controller is a qualified navigation function, convergence to the desired formation is guaranteed.