Cooperative conveyance by vehicle swarms with dynamic network topology

This paper deals with cooperative conveyance control by vehicle swarms with dynamic network topology. First, we introduce a dynamic network topology that depends on relative distance between the vehicles. Secondly, we propose a novel conveyance strategy based on consensus seeking with dynamic network topology. The proposed strategy needs at least one vehicle which can acquire the information of the target-object and network topology among vehicles is time-varying but always connected. Furthermore the strategy is composed of Surround and. Transport mode. To analyze the convergence of conveyance with dynamic network topology, algebraic graph theory and matrix theory are utilized. Finally, numerical simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.