A decentralized, convergent, nearest neighbor, spatial consensus, control protocol

In this paper a convergent, nearest-neighbor, consensus control protocol is suggested for agents with nontrivial dynamics. The protocol guarantees convergence to a common point in space even if each agent is restricted to communicate with its nearest neighbor. The neighbor, however, is restricted to lie outside an arbitrarily small priority zone surrounding the agent. The control protocol consists of two layers interconnected in a provably-correct manner. The first layer guides the agent to the rendezvous point while the other converts the guidance signal to a control signal that suits realistic agents such as UGVs, UAVs and holonomic agents with second order dynamics.