Collective Behavior of Dynamic Swarm with General Topology and Complex Communication Time-Delays

This paper presents a complex interaction delayed swarm model with a general topology to study the collective behavior of a group of autonomous agents using the nearest neighbor rulers in the presence of communication delays. It is proved that under certain conditions the swarm members will converge to a finite region around the swarm weighted center and move together in a cohesive cluster following the motion of the weighted center. For general cases, the delayed swarm may display more complex dynamics, including oscillation and divergence, depending on the delay values. This suggests that the time delay may have significant consequence in the collective dynamics of swarms.