Cyclic pursuit strategy for multi-agent dynamical systems with sampled communication

This paper studies a cyclic pursuit strategy in target-enclosing operation by multi-agent continuous-time dynamical systems with sampled communication. To this end, we first develop an on-line path generator based on a discrete-time cyclic pursuit scheme, which includes communication time delay. Then, we present a simple diagrammatic pursuit formation stability analysis method, which is derived based on a stability condition for hierarchical large-scale systems with generalized frequency variable. The distributed formation control scheme for multi-agent continuous-time dynamical systems combined with discrete-time pursuit path generator satisfying the derived stability condition guarantees the required global convergence property with theoretical rigor.