Connectivity-preserving flocking of multi-agent systems with application towheeled mobile robots

This paper investigates distributed flocking of multiple autonomous agents under graph connectivity constraint. Hybrid artificial potential functions which could cope with the problems of connectivity preserving as well as collision avoidance are devised for all the agents. Combined with the linear velocity consensus protocol, a set of provable decentralized control laws is presented to enable the group to asymptotically exhibit the stable flocking motion while preserving the network connectivity for all time provided that the initial communication topology is connected. Furthermore, the proposed coordinated controllers are applied to the flocking control of a team of wheeled mobile robots. Finally, nontrivial simulations and experiments are demonstrated to verify the theoretic results.